Categories: News, Schenectady County

SCHENECTADY — A man charged with running a large sex ring had previously given police a phone number that matched one posted with multiple online ads authorities believe were fronts for prostitution, according to documents filed in the case.

Julio Escobar, 30, of Brooklyn, was indicted in Schenectady County in June on a host of felony sex trafficking and promoting prostitution counts.

Authorities say he managed a prostitution ring that used the website Backpage to advertise its women and at least one girl age 16. The ring started in Schenectady last year and expanded to other areas around the Northeast, prosecutors said.

A grand jury indicted Escobar after a six-month investigation. His alleged comments to police came after a March traffic stop in Albany, according to documents filed by Escobar’s defense.

It was unclear from court papers if investigators planned the March 9 traffic stop as part of the larger trafficking investigation, but state police Investigator Daniel Kiley soon after questioned Escobar about a woman found with Escobar in the car.

Escobar told Kiley that the woman had come to the Albany area to make money prostituting, but he denied involvement in her activities, court documents read.

Kiley then noted two Backpage posts over the previous 48 hours that included the phone number Escobar gave police after the stop.

One ad included photos of the woman stopped with Escobar. The other included photos of someone known to investigators to be 16.

Escobar’s defense attorney, Frederick Rench, filed the documents recently in the Schenectady case, arguing that police improperly stopped Escobar. A hearing on the issue had been scheduled for Monday, but is now set for next week.

Police not only got the alleged statements from Escobar from the stop, but also seized his phone. Kiley’s narrative is included in a warrant application to search the phone.

Of his more than a dozen prostitutes, prosecutors said, a number of them were from the Capital Region, with others coming from Massachusetts and elsewhere in New York state.

The woman with Escobar at the March 9 traffic stop in Albany was from the New Bedford, Mass., area, according to documents.

An Albany County sheriff’s deputy pulled Escobar over at Rensselaer and South Pearl streets just after 9 p.m. for traffic violations, court documents read.

Escobar initially gave the deputy a false name while the deputy detected an odor of marijuana from the car. Authorities then found four pipes with cocaine residue and heroin on both Escobar and the woman, according to documents.

Both faced charges related to the stop. Investigators also seized Escobar’s phone.

Investigators believe Escobar arranged meetings between patrons and the women he employed, negotiated pricing, escorted the women to the meetings and took up to 100 percent of the money produced by those meetings.

Escobar faces a total of six counts of sex trafficking, accused of compelling teens to engage in prostitution by instilling fear in them. If convicted of any one sex trafficking count, Escobar would face up to 25 years in state prison. He also faces various promoting prostitution counts.

He is specifically accused of profiting from the prostitution of someone under the age of 18 years old on March 7 in Glenville and between August and October of last year somewhere in Schenectady County.

The operation Escobar is accused of leading used Backpage to advertise sex services throughout the Capital Region, Interstate 87 corridor, New York City, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

The Schenectady Police Department, Schenectady County District Attorney’s Office and state police investigated.