NM man sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for commercial sex trafficking

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An Albuquerque man was sentenced last week to 15 years in federal prison for his conviction on a commercial sex trafficking charge.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents investigated this case; the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) vice unit assisted.

Shane Roach, 27, was sentenced April 13. His prison sentence is to be followed by five years of supervised release, and he must register as a sex offender when he completes his sentence.

Roach was arrested July 1, 2015, on a criminal complaint charging him with commercial sex trafficking. Roach subsequently was indicted and charged with using force, threats of threats, and coercion to force a victim to engage in commercial sex acts. The indictment charged Roach with committing the crime between May and June 2015 in Bernalillo County, New Mexico.

Roach went to trial on the indictment Oct. 4, 2016; the jury returned a guilty verdict Oct. 7, 2016. During the trial, the victim told the jury that in early 2015, she was a heroin addict who turned to prostitution to support her heroin habit. The victim met Roach in late April 2015, and turned to him for help shortly thereafter when she fell on hard times.

For the next month and a half, Roach was the victim’s pimp and forced her to engage in prostitution. The victim said that, during that time, Roach forced her to engage in sex with men four or five times a day, and that Roach kept all her earnings, amounting to $400 to $500 per day. The victim also testified that Roach beat her on a number of occasions, brandished a firearm at her, and threatened to harm her family if she left him. During the month and a half during which she was sex trafficked by Roach, the victim had only three or four days off.

An APD detective testified at trial that on May 27, 2015, while acting in an undercover capacity, he arranged to meet the victim at an Albuquerque-area hotel after getting her contact information from an online prostitution ad. The meeting was brief because the victim recognized the detective’s partner as a police officer, who was outside, and told the undercover officer that there were officers outside. The undercover officer testified that on June 10, 2015, police received a call for help from the victim and he was one of the officers who responded. During that meeting, the victim told police she was being sex trafficked by Roach, and the investigation leading to Roach’s conviction began that day. During trial, Roach testified in his own defense. While generally acknowledging he was the victim’s pimp, he denied using threats of force, force or coercion to force to the victim to engage in commercial sex acts.