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WILKES-BARRE — Human trafficking may sound like an exotic crime involving shadowy perpetrators from faraway lands whisking victims across oceans and borders.

In reality, as attorney Tom Mosca explained Tuesday evening, it’s a contemporary name for achingly familiar crimes that take place domestically, including here in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Think pimps. Prostitution. Exploitation of vulnerable victims.

“Human trafficking is, in a nutshell, modern-day slavery,” Mosca said during a county-wide crime watch meeting held at the Luzerne County Courthouse.

Mosca, a Kingston native and Dallas resident, serves as co-chair of the NEPA Task Force Against Human Trafficking.

Many people confuse human smuggling with human trafficking, Mosca said. The former is when individuals help smuggle people into the country for a profit. The latter is when individuals exploit vulnerable people for profit — in roughly 80 percent of cases this involves sex acts, though some are also held for their labor, as in restaurants, hotels or domestic service situations.

“These can be legitimate businesses,” Mosca said. “If you see people living and working in the same place, that can be a red flag.”

While human trafficking can be international, 83 percent of estimated victims in the United States are U.S. citizens, Mosca said. Such traffic often crosses state lines, but it can begin with family members exploiting their own kin close to home. Victims can be any age, race or gender, but the majority are young women.

And the Wyoming Valley is not immune.

Mosca recalled headlines such as a 2013 case in which two Pittston men were indicted on charges that they coerced minor females to work as “escorts,” advertising their services on a website and threatening the teens if they hesitated to have sex with clients in area motels. The case resulted in federal prison sentences.

“You can sell a bag of drugs once, but you can sell a human being over and over and over again,” Mosca said.

The audience Tuesday also heard from several other speakers, including Dan Mimnaugh, coordinator of the Luzerne County Drug Task Force. It is a coalition of law enforcement agencies throughout the county that collaborate on narcotics-related investigations.

Mimnaugh, a retired state trooper with more than a decade of experience in vice and organized crime, recalled a 2011 traffic stop in Susquehanna County that led to state and federal investigations into an interstate human trafficking and drug ring centered in Brooklyn, N.Y.

As part of that investigation, Mimnaugh recalled interviewing a 12-year-old human trafficking victim “who had just become numb to it,” he said of the abuse she had endured.

If there is a silver lining, Mimnaugh suggested that inter-agency cooperation on drug and human trafficking cases is better now than he has ever seen it during his career.

He also cautioned the audience that the work of battling drug dealing likely will never end, but the task force is in the midst of a stepped-up campaign that is paying off.

“Like terrorism, we will never eradicate it,” Mimnaugh said. “The goal is to keep neighborhoods livable.”

Maria Hoban and Michelle Mago, from the Hughestown Neighborhood Crime Watch, attended Tuesday’s meeting in Wilkes-Barre. Both agreed the information was useful.

Sadly, neither was shocked at what they heard.

“No, I’m not surprised,” Hoban said.

Dan Mimnaugh, coordinator of the Luzerne County Drug Task Force, talks about combatting human trafficking and drug trafficking during a crime watch meeting at the county courthouse.
https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/web1_TTL041118HumanTrafficking2-1.jpg.optimal.jpgDan Mimnaugh, coordinator of the Luzerne County Drug Task Force, talks about combatting human trafficking and drug trafficking during a crime watch meeting at the county courthouse. Sean McKeag | Times Leader

Thomas Mosca, co-chair of the NEPA Task Force Against Human Trafficking, speaks Tuesday during a crime watch meeting at the Luzerne County Courthouse.
https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/web1_TTL041118HumanTrafficking1-1.jpg.optimal.jpgThomas Mosca, co-chair of the NEPA Task Force Against Human Trafficking, speaks Tuesday during a crime watch meeting at the Luzerne County Courthouse. Sean McKeag | Times Leader

By Roger DuPuis

[email protected]

Human trafficking in focus

• To learn more:

www.dhs.gov/bluecampaign or www.traffickingresourcecenter.org

• To report a case:

Call 1-888-373-7888 or your local police