A Long Island man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to running a sex “dungeon” in his parents’ basement — where he plied more than 20 women with narcotics and forced them to turn tricks.
Raymond Rodio III, 48, was busted in August 2018 by Suffolk County Police during a routine traffic stop when officers noticed a passenger in his car who appeared to be a victim of sex trafficking, Suffolk County District Attorney Tim Sini said.
Beginning in 2014, the South Beach man ran a prostitution ring out of the bathroom-less and window-less basement of his parents’ house.
There, he locked the women inside, feeding them heroin and crack cocaine to impair their judgment and threatening at least one of them with physical violence, prosecutors said.
Rodio recruited his victims — largely Suffolk County women in their 20s — from social media or through other methods, Sini said.
He would give them the drugs, often for free, “so that they would develop a dependency on him” and then force them to have sex for money, Sini said.
He’d run advertisements on websites like Backpage.com and Craigslist for his victims and would keep most or almost all of the cash they made.
An investigation found he’d also been selling drugs, officials said.
Rodio originally pleaded not guilty in April 2019, but on Tuesday copped to a slew of charges including several counts of sex trafficking, criminal sale of a controlled substance and promoting prostitution.
He’s expected to be sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in prison and five years of post-release supervision at his sentencing hearing on March 9, prosecutors said.
He’ll also be required to register as a sex offender upon his release.