Description

"Matt and the undercover team told the traffickers they were organizing a private party for their boss, a wealthy American businessman who was flying in for the event. The price for a girl for the six-hour sex party was $500. 'They talked to us as if they were selling a product. All the traffickers see is the money. We were told the girls would do anything we wanted, however we wanted,' Matt, 43, tol the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview. As the music and drinks flowed and the hidden cameras rolled, 15 men and one woman posing as partygoers, including an ex-U.S. Navy SEAL and three undercover armed Dominican police, mingled with the 29 women and girls the traffickers had brought. The money changed hands and someone said: 'Let's have the wime,' the signal to send a message to seven other Dominican police who were staking out the sex party in a house across the street. Minutes later, police stormed through the front door and arrested seven aleged traffickers - five men and two women - along with Matt and the undercover team to preserve their fake identities. The sting operation, based on investigative work by U.S. law enforcement officials and Dominican state prosecutors, follows several others, part of a campaign by the two governments to fight child sex tourism on the island."