www.CostaRicaTicas.com

Hey guys, Brother RingoG found the following on A.M. Costa Rica. (www.amcostarica.com/101003.htm)

Note in the second to last paragraph that the CR police believe that the going price that “a typical adult prostitute charges in downtown San José” is somewhere less than $50.

It goes without saying that anybody who fools around with minors deserves the full penalty of the law... and maybe more once they are in jail. Pedophiles don’t get the red carpet treatment in jail, you know (heh, heh, heh).

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Agents Hold Two as Pimps of Minor Girls

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

Investigators broke up what they described as a prostitution outcall service that specialized in providing underaged girls to foreigners and local customers.

Agents said the going rate was $300 for a romantic interlude with a minor.

Two persons, a 41-year-old woman and a 29-year-old man, were arrested in the two-part operation. Agents for the Judicial Investigating Organization said they had been observing the pair for more than seven months.

The woman has the last name of Monge and lived in Hatillo 3, a residential area west and south of San José.

The first person arrested Thursday morning was a man with the name of Potromioro. He was solicited by an investigator pretending to be a customer. The man delivered two women, one of them a minor, to a place in the vicinity of the former Plaza de Toros in Zapote, which is south and east of San José. There he and his two passengers were detained by police.

A short time later agents raided the woman’s home where they found her and two other young persons, including a female minor, investigators said.

The price that the pair charged customers for the minor girls is from six to eight times what a typical adult prostitute charges in downtown San José. Investigators said that a number of the customers of the service were foreigners and North Americans.

Police are expected to review the pair’s record in an effort to build cases against former customers. The two are being charged with aggravated pimping or proxenetismo in Spanish because of the young age of their prostitutes, who ranged from 14.

Apparently, the investigative reporter who wrote that piece did not venture in through DR/BM. It would've skewed the average up "a little".

-Orange

I think those numbers are realistic, including the DR/BM.

I have paid less than $50 at the DR on many occasions, and by our own admission, none of us pay $100. Right?

Think of all the TICO MPs where you can go for 8,000 colones, or less.

_________________
It is cheaper to pay now and get it over with.
It is also easier to get them to leave.

What are the odds that la mujer's apellido would be "Monge"?

Way to go LE!!!




Underdog

Who would much rather party with a chica that could teach him a few things than one that still outgrows her sneakers every few months...

I think that's what the A.M. Costa Rica staff probably pay.

I thought that case sounded familiar. This case is actually almost a year old. These arrests occurred back in October around the time of the news article. What is even more interesting is the follow-up results of the trial which occurred last winter:
Modest sentence in big pimping trial raises quesions
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

A New Jersey teacher faces 30 years in prison after being convicted in an FBI sting of getting on a plane with the intent of coming to Costa Rica to have sex with minor girls.

Another U.S. citizen, Curtis Baker, got 24 years in Costa Rican prison because he gave drugs to the und***ge prostitutes who flocked to his Quepos home.

A friend of Baker, former dentist Arthur Kanev, faces charges of violating drug laws, providing drugs to minors, corruption of minors, rape and carnal knowledge. He was a media item when he was extradited from the United States.

Sinai Monge Muñoz, a woman who ran a prostitution ring and enlisted many und***ge youngsters in her long-running business got a sentence of eight years Monday. She was convicted of pimping, but the three- judge panel did not convict her on a related conspiracy count.

With good behavior and time served before conviction, she can be out in two and a half years. There is a chance the sentence will be modified on appeal.

The cases of the North Americans and that of one of San Jose’s most notorious pimps serves to highlight the contradictions that exist here over prostitution and prostitution of minors.

Costa Rican officials are hard on what they consider sex tourists, persons who come here seeking companions under the age of 18. Yet these same officials recognize that sex tourists seeking adult companionship represent significant national income.

For years, officials seemed to be blind to local exploitation of minors. Part of the reason can be gleaned from the evidence in the Monge trial. A broad cross-section of Costa Rican society was represented on her customer list. No names have been mentioned, mostly because of Costa Rica’s defamation laws. But a criminal judge seems to have been involved, as were soccer players, a night club owner, businessmen and even a ranking Judicial Investigating Organization official.

The Ministerio Público has extensive tapes of conversations between Ms. Monge and clients. They also have reports of at least a year of surveillance at her place of business in San Sebastian section of San José. Neighbors said they saw official cars visiting the location frequently.

The ministry, the nation’s prosecutor, also has all of the business records generated by Ms. Monge.

However, there has not been a single arrest of a client who might have availed himself of an und***ge prostitute.

One of the young prostitutes was rewarded by the three-judge panel Monday. She was awarded 5 million colons (some $11,000) as compensation, although there has been no testimony of coercion. Other former Monge employees dropped out of the case.

Curiously, prosecutors sought only a 10-year term for Ms. Monge in the final arguments to the three judges. Also sought was a six-year penalty for conspiracy, which was rejected outright.

The strange penalty has raised the possibility that Ms. Monge has agreed to give evidence against others involved in the case. But it would hardly seem fair to convict clients for a term longer than that of the pimp.

The other possibility is that the relatively short prison sentence is a payoff to Ms. Monge for keeping her mouth shut and not dragging high officials into the trial as a diversion.

If no client prosecutions come from the Monge case, the second scenario is more likely.

BTW, underdog, Monge is actually a fairly common name in CR. I believe a former president of CR from back in the 80's was named Monge. I wonder if he was any relation

What bothers me the most is the following:



I really don't see what their record has to do with anything if they were caught in the act of pandering minors. It may be possible that there is some type of "enhancement" for prior offenses, but that wouldn't affect the underlying crime.

The second thing that struck me odd was that "the police had been watching them for 7 months." How many minors do you have to pander before the police will do anything?

I applaud their capture but can't help but wonder about the ways of Costa Rican law enfocement.

ElGamin

El G,
Why does it bother you? You're not on their list, are you? They got their case against the pimps, but they need to gather info to go after their customers too or wouldn't you agree? Re-read my post, however. When they found out all the top governmental officials and local citizens that were on that pimp's customer rolls, they quickly abandoned any plan of investigating further and quickly cut her a deal to keep quiet.

This is another good reason to never pick up anyone even near the age of question on the street or in clubs. The Blue Marlin and MPs really do us a favor we often don't appreciate in screening ages and id. Pretty scary about the authorities tracking guys "on their way" to Costa Rica. It would seem pretty hard to prove anyone was "on their way" to do anything.

Since we are on the subject..............Is there any reason I should worry about traveling with a tica and her family? A teenage sister and two ninas.

Any laws I could be breaking?

_________________
GG
"Last time I said no......I misunderstood the question!"

It's not so hard to prove when the stupid putz tells everybody about his plans and some do gooder turns him in to the FBI, who records his blabbering to use as evidence. That's what the cop in Florida did. You'd think a cop would know better.
And by the way,according to my Tico contact in San Jose (whom I've known for seven years), the cops in CR are mostly after Tourists, not locals for messing with the und***ge girls. They 've NEVER really cared about it, and only started enforcing laws against it when Brucie Harris and his friends started making a stink to the U.S. media, and bringing heat down on them.
If you doubt it , ask the next one you do when she started having sex, and whether anybody there gave a shit.
Just be careful YOU don't mess with an under 18, the cops ARE out to make a show for the Christers, and you AREN'T a local.

_________________
"You only live ONCE but it does help if you get to be young TWICE"
¨You cannot love life until you live the life you Love

ABSOLUTELY!!! That was a major point of the article I reprinted.

Lets check the score. On the gringo side there is NJ Teacher GOING to CR 30 years, US citizen Curtis Baker 24 years and Baker's friend from the US Arthur Kanev facing god knows what. Now on the latino side there Madam Monge who gets only 8 years for running a entire prostitution ring pimping out und***ge girls for nearly a decade (probably out in only 2.5yrs) and her mostly Tico client base who probably won't even be investigated at all.

I have no problem at all with those gringo jerks getting the stiff sentences they did (or the other stiffies they'll probably receive during their sentences). What I have a problem with is the perception that the media attention to those guys creates that the problem of sexual exploitation of minors is primarily one of what gringos are doing or that those gringos that are involved are in any way representative of what the vast majority of the rest of us sex tourists are doing.

I say let them hang!

What we do with consenting adults is our business but these bastards knowingly messing with Ch*ldren makes me want to throw up. These jerks give us all a bad name and what’s more, they bring the attention of the media on us all. Last thing I want is my mug shot on a 60 minutes story at the DR or some bullshit piece in the USA today.

I hope they catch more of these guys. The more they catch and throw in jail the sooner they’ll get the message and piss off elsewhere.

Rant Over.

_________________
"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers" - Maybe Shakespeare was a CRT member?