PANAMA CITY — A grand jury has indicted a man suspected of kidnapping a Panama City Beach woman from her home and driving her to a brothel in Mississippi with plans to put her to work as a prostitute for a multistate sex-trafficking organization.
Jacobo Feliciano-Francisco, who also is known as Uriel Castillo-Ochoa and Kiko, is charged with kidnapping, retaliating against a witness and transporting and coercing an individual for prostitution, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Feliciano-Francisco, 30, was arrested by Hattiesburg, Miss., police after the victim escaped from a home where she was being held.
The News Herald does not identify victims of sex crimes.
According to the indictment:
The victim had been forced to work as a prostitute for about three years between 2009 and 2011 for a network of brothels and pimps in Tennessee and Kentucky before she cooperated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Her testimony against the defendants, who forced undocumented aliens from Spanish-speaking counties to work as prostitutes, resulted in 13 convictions.
The victim still was living in Tennessee in fall 2012 when she was confronted by an unnamed individual about her cooperation with the government. She and her family were relocated to Panama City Beach out of fear for their safety, though she was not part of the witness protection program.
Feliciano-Francisco and other unnamed individuals conspired to kidnap the victim, take her to Louisiana and put her back to work as a prostitute in retaliation for testifying against the organization.
Just before noon June 27, Feliciano-Francisco and another man pulled up outside the victim’s home and ordered her into their car. One of the men put his hand near his waistband, intimating he had a gun, and threatened the victim’s uncle and her children as a warning against contacting police.
By 6:30 p.m., the victim called her husband crying to say she was safe at the Hattiesburg Police Department. She led police to the house she had escaped, where police arrested Feliciano-Francisco, who allegedly had raped her at some point during the kidnapping. She was being held there until another unnamed person brought her to Louisiana.
Feliciano-Francisco pleaded not guilty to the five-count indictment during his first appearance in court Monday. His trial is scheduled for Dec. 9, and he faces a maximum sentence of life behind bars if he’s convicted.
The case will be prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Risinger. The indictment was the result of an investigation by the FBI and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations.