Accused Madam Gets 3 Years’ Probation : Court: Investigation shows that the woman, who pleaded guilty to living in a house of prostitution, was not the ringleader.

An 18-year-old woman accused of being the madam of an Anaheim prostitution ring pleaded guilty Thursday to one misdemeanor count of living in a house of prostitution.

Cera Rauda Sanchez, who originally faced 20 counts of felony pimping and pandering, was placed on three years’ probation and released. Although prosecutors initially called her the leader of the ring, which recruited young women from Mexico and operated out of an Anaheim hotel, officials later said that further investigation indicated she was not running the scheme.

“She was extremely less culpable than she was thought to be,” said Rauda’s court-appointed attorney, Deputy Public Defender Ronald E. Klar. “She wasn’t the ringleader.”

Rauda was one of 11 women and teen-age girls arrested in a police sting operation at the Granada Inn, 2375 W. Lincoln Ave., on April 7. Authorities said the ring recruited poor, young women from Mexico to be prostitutes in 10 rooms on the hotel’s first floor. Police said that each room had a case of condoms and that the women and girls worked from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.

The prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Matthew S. Anderson, said the original charges against Rauda were dropped because evidence later gathered by authorities showed that someone else probably organized the ring.

Anaheim police are still investigating the ring, which they said began operating in December. The ring advertised “a good time at the hotel” in Asian- and Spanish-language newspapers, police said.

Each of the six other women arrested with Rauda also pleaded guilty to one count of living in a house of prostitution and was put on three years’ probation. Anderson said that the four juveniles’ cases were adjudicated on April 22 but that he could not release details on their cases.

Anderson said that Rauda had cooperated with authorities since her arrest but that aiding police was not a condition of her release.

Klar said Rauda will return to Mexico, where, she said, she had worked as a maid for $5 a day and where she had left a 10-month-old son with her grandparents.

In a jailhouse interview three weeks ago, Rauda said she was “just one of the working girls” in the ring. She said she believed that the ring’s operator, whom she called Ellie, had set her up the night of the sting by leaving her in charge of showing the prostitutes’ photographs to prospective clients and collecting the $70 or $80 fees.

Rauda also described how she was recruited by a woman in her home state of Guerrero, Mexico. She was told she could make up to $6,000 in three months as a prostitute in the United States.

Rauda said she was smuggled across the border near San Ysidro and began work at the hotel on March 28.

Ragi Patel, president of Sugandh Inc., which owns the 80-room hotel, said Thursday that neither he nor the hotel manager was aware of the prostitution activity.