William Alberto Lopez, an alleged Houston gang leader, has pleaded guilty to charges that he trafficked several Central American women and forced them into prostitution, in an agreement that is likely to send him to prison for 15 years or more.
Lopez, who prosecutors say is part of a sex trafficking gang run by his family, had been scheduled to stand trial later this month on 27 counts of sex trafficking and human smuggling charges. Under the plea agreement, entered in federal court in Houston, Lopez pleaded guilty last week to one count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking by force and one count of aiding and abetting sex trafficking by force.
Sean Buckley, a private attorney who began representing Lopez shortly after he was arrested by Mexican authorities in April 2018, did not respond to a request for comment. The high-profile arrest came about five months after a grand jury indicted Lopez and 22 others on charges ranging from sex trafficking, drug trafficking, selling firearms, human smuggling and identity theft.
Among those charged were Lopez’s mother and his four brothers, all of whom authorities say were leaders of the Southwest Cholos, a gang that reportedly operates in Southwest Houston. The family members were accused of running brothels at several Gulfton-area apartment complexes and Lopez, according to the plea agreement, played a crucial role in the operation.
According to the plea agreement, Lopez made arrangements for smugglers to sneak at least four women into the United States from Mexico between 2010 and 2017. One was told by Lopez that she could pay off a $4,500 entry fee by working at his mother’s restaurant, the agreement says.
But when the woman arrived in Houston in 2012, Lopez and his mother – Maria Angelica Moreno-Reyna – informed her there was no restaurant and that she would work off her debt by having sex with men at Carriage Way Apartments on Dashwood Drive.
Forced into sex work, the woman was repeatedly abused and threatened by Lopez, who acted as her pimp, according to the agreement. She was also forced by Lopez to tattoo his initials on her body. Another woman was also forced by Lopez to tattoo his initials on her neck and thigh while working at a brothel he operated in Cancun, Mexico, in 2016, the agreement says.
The second woman was able to escape from the Cancun brothel but was forced into sex work a second time after her mother, who, according to the agreement, lived at Carriage Way at the time, worked with Moreno-Reyna to get her to Houston.
At times, she refused to prostitute herself to pay off the $9,000 fee, the agreement says. Those refusals were met by threats from Lopez that he would harm her son and family in Nicaragua if she didn’t do as she was told. Lopez also told the woman that she owed him an additional $20,000 for fleeing from the Cancun brothel.
In early 2017, Lopez and his mother spoke over the phone about smuggling the woman’s sisters into the United States to work at the brothels, the agreement says. Law enforcement officials, eavesdropping on the call through a wiretap, moved the sisters to another location days before a vehicle matching the description of one driven by Lopez was seen outside their home in Central America, the agreement says.
The plea agreement also details how, on two separate occasions in 2012 and 2013, a third woman fled from Houston to Mexico, only to return to Texas each time after Lopez threatened to harm her family. Threatened with violence herself, the woman agreed to undergo cosmetic surgery after Lopez told her she was not making enough money for the sex trafficking ring, the plea agreement says.
A fourth woman was threatened with deportation without her American-born child when she refused to continue working for Lopez and his family, according to the agreement.
The agreement lists three properties as being instrumental to the trafficking ring:
- What appears to be a now-closed bar at 7396 Irvington Blvd. and the parking lot behind it were used to attract customers, also referred to as “johns.”
- A property in the 4000 block of Woodleigh Street was used to house those being trafficked.
- A property in the 1000 block of Coral Street was also used to house trafficked women.
U.S. District Judge Charles Eskridge, appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019, must approve the plea agreement before it becomes official. U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Bray has recommended that he do so.
Court records show that Adam Goldman, the lead prosecutor handling the case, has struck plea agreements with nineteen of the 23 people charged. The remaining four are considered fugitives, and five others were charged in separate cases.
Moreno-Reyna and her four other sons, Freddy Montes, Walter Lopez, Eddie Alejandro, and Jose Luis Moreno, are among those who have pleaded guilty. Sentencings that had been paused because of Lopez’s trial will now proceed.
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