Woman Denies Running Hotel Prostitution Ring

A woman who police say ran a prostitution ring out of a local hotel denied the allegation in a jailhouse interview Thursday, saying she was just “one of the working girls” who took orders from another woman in charge of the operation.

Cira Rauda Sanchez, 18, a Mexican national, was arrested at the Granada Inn Hotel last week, together with six other women and four teen-age girls, following a police undercover operation.

Rauda faces more serious charges than the rest of the group, which police say was recruited largely from Mexico. But she offered a far different account Thursday of her role than the portrait presented by authorities earlier this week in announcing her arrest.

She claimed in the interview that she was simply one of the prostitutes working at the hotel under the supervision of a woman she called Ellie.

“I was mistaken for the woman who (handled) the girls,” she said, adding that she thinks Ellie might have set her up. On the night of her arrest, she said, Ellie asked her to take over the operation for “an hour or two” before the police raid.

She claims Ellie and two other women then escaped through the hotel rooms’ back windows when they saw the police arrive. She did not think Ellie had been arrested.

Rauda said she found it relatively simple to run the operation for those two hours. She had to show photos of some dozen prostitutes to clients, charge them a fee of $70 to $80 once they made their choices, and send them to the right room at the motel, she said.

“But I was not in charge of anything. I was one of the working girls,” she said, adding that she was regularly paid to have sex with six to seven men each day.

But police investigators said Rauda was the one who regularly handled the operations at the hotel for a ring that might operate in other areas of the county. They said they are also investigating any connection between the ring and the owner of the hotel, Ravji Patel, who could not be reached for comment.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Anderson said Thursday that he might take Rauda’s statements into consideration in prosecuting the case.

“The evidence we have is sufficient to file the charges we did,” Anderson said, “(But) clearly, we are still looking at this case (and) and I am willing to listen to what she has to say (through) her lawyer.”

Rauda’s court-appointed attorney, Deputy Public Defender Ronald Klar, declined comment.

Rauda pleaded not guilty Monday to 20 felony counts of pimping and pandering. Her preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 22 in Orange County Municipal Court in Fullerton, and she could face a maximum of about 10 years in prison if convicted on all charges.

The other six adult women pleaded guilty Monday to misdemeanor counts of living in a house of prostitution and were sentenced to 10 days in jail and placed on three years’ probation. The teen-age defendants remain in custody at the county’s Juvenile Hall.

Rauda said Thursday that she had been working at the hotel since March 28, only days after she and a female friend were recruited for the job in Mexico and then took a bus from San Jacinto, in the west coast state of Guerrero, Mexico, en route to Orange County.

The recruiter, she said, was a tall, handsome woman with short hair who approached her and her friend as they were leaving an adult school and asked them if they knew anyone who needed a good job.

The recruiter soon revealed what the job entailed, telling them that she herself had made $6,000 to $7,000 in three months as a prostitute, Rauda said. Attracted by the prospects of making good money in such a short time, she and her friend quickly accepted, Rauda said.

The recruiter bought them each a pair of jeans, a blouse and tennis shoes for the bus trip to Tijuana, which cost $125 each. When they arrived in Tijuana around March 25, she said, they were met at the bus station by an elegant blond woman wearing black pants and jacket.

Suddenly, they heard the woman telling them their wages depended on their performance, and they froze, Rauda said.

“She said she had spent a lot of money on us and we had to come through,” she said. “I began to feel afraid. We had no other choice. We knew no one there (in Tijuana). We had no money.

“My friend had told me she had heard several girls (from their hometown) had made the trip but had not returned and were never seen again, and I imagined the same thing could happen to us,” she said.

Next, Rauda said, a “coyote” or alien-smuggler hired by the prostitution ring smuggled her and her friend into the United States at night through the hills south of San Diego. She and the friend, who Rauda said is one of the juveniles in custody, were then dropped at a house in San Ysidro. From there they were taken to the hotel in Anaheim.

Rauda said she has a 10-month-old boy whom she left with her grandparents in San Jacinto and has yet to baptize. The need to sustain their families amid “lots of poverty,” she said, forced her and the other women to prostitute themselves.

While she was in school, Rauda said, she worked as a maid in well-to-do homes for $5 a day. “You know what you can buy with $5 today in Mexico? Almost nothing,” she said.

“We all came to make money to send it back to Mexico. Our families have great needs,” she said. “I repent for what I did, but what else could I do?”