Star Tribune
Castro Medina sentenced to three years for role in Lazzaro sex-trafficking scheme
The young woman who admitted to helping sex traffic teen girls for Anton Lazzaro was sentenced to three years in federal prison Tuesday after a wrenching hearing where those who spoke before the judge were at a loss for what decision he should render.
Gisela Castro Medina, now 21, pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and obstructing the investigation. She testified against Lazzaro, a former Minnesota GOP operative and donor, during a March trial in which a federal jury found him guilty. Lazzaro, 32, was sentenced to 21 years in prison last month.
Prosecutors had argued that Castro Medina “played a crucial and despicable role” in trafficking 15- and 16-year-old girls for Lazzaro, who in turn gave her $80,000 in cash and other benefits for recruiting the girls to visit Lazzaro’s Hotel Ivy condominium in Minneapolis for commercial sex in 2020.
But they also acknowledged her extensive help in the government’s case against Lazzaro, which included more than a day of testifying about her role in the conspiracy. Castro Medina met Lazzaro just after she turned 18 and while she was still in high school. He paid her for sex and, prosecutors said, raped her when she was so intoxicated that she was barely conscious. She came to revere him and rely on him, and Lazzaro soon asked her to start recruiting additional girls on social media to have sex with him for money.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Melinda Williams called Castro Medina “as good a cooperator as I’ve ever encountered” and said she helped the government under “really extraordinary pressure.” She highlighted the path to sobriety that followed her arrest and furthering education as contrasts to Lazzaro, in whom the prosecution saw no redeeming qualities and viewed as an “unrepentant, dangerous predator.”
Prosecutors sought a seven-year prison sentence, while Castro Medina’s lawyers asked for her to be sentenced to time served.
“I’m not sure what I would do if I were you, your honor,” Williams said before Chief U.S. District Patrick Schiltz announced his judgment.
Schiltz said that by giving Castro Medina a lesser sentence than the potential for decades or even life that the guidelines contemplated, he did not mean to diminish the seriousness of the crimes.
“She helped him at every step of the way,” Schiltz said, later adding: “None of these victims would now be suffering that harm but for Castro Medina. Their suffering is on her hands as well as on Mr. Lazzaro.”
But Schiltz said that Lazzaro “recognized a broken girl when he saw one” and skillfully groomed Castro Medina to recruit for him, just as he groomed his other victims.
The judge noted that Lazzaro, or someone acting on his behalf, tried to buy Castro Medina’s silence through anonymous cash gifts of thousands of dollars before her eventual December 2022 guilty plea. But Castro Medina disclosed the payments, and that money was later deposited into an account that will be used to pay victims restitution.
Castro Medina requested that she be imprisoned in Texas. Schiltz agreed to allow her to self-surrender to begin her sentence next month.
Castro Medina has been free under supervision since her August 2021 arrest and indictment while a freshman at St. Thomas University. A row of supporters sat across the aisle in the courtroom gallery for Tuesday’s hearing, which spanned more than an hour.
Through tearful remarks to the court, Castro Medina apologized to the victims — which included her former best friend — and thanked law enforcement for their intervention.
“Had it not been for their intervention I don’t think I would be here right now,” she said before being sentenced. “I was so deeply invested in my relationship with Anton that I saw no way out. I hated myself and my choices and actions when I was with Anton.”
Castro Medina said she now wanted to become an advocate for sex trafficking victims and to pursue a law degree one day if given the chance.
But the parents of her former friend, identified in this case as Victim A, pleaded with Schiltz on Tuesday to deliver a harsh penalty and expressed doubts that Castro Medina has reformed. The girl’s father argued that Castro Medina was smart, manipulative and would repeat this behavior if allowed to go free.
Taking turns speaking, they described their daughter as idolizing Castro Medina and being manipulated and controlled by her. Their daughter received a life sentence by her former friend’s hand, they said.
“You used her and she became your puppet,” the mother said, repeatedly describing Castro Medina’s behavior as “greed, power and control.”
“Your soul is as dark as your eyes, and I despise you,” she said.
“I honestly think he used to understand how tariffs work,” Cuban said. “Back in the 90s and early 2000s, he was a little bit coherent when he talked about trade policy and he actually made a little bit of sense. But I don’t know what happened to him.”
Speaking in Pittsburgh on Thursday, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance, pushed back against the Harris campaign’s claims that tariffs would hurt the economy. Vance described the tariffs as a way of discouraging imports and boosting American manufacturing.
“If you are a business, and you rely on foreign slave labor at $3 a day, the only way to rebuild American manufacturing is to say, if you want to bring that product made by slave labor back into the United States of America, you’re going to pay a big fat tariff before you get it back into our country,” Vance said.
Back in Wisconsin, Amara Marshell, freshman at UW-La Crosse, said she showed up to support Harris because she is concerned about what a second Trump presidency could mean for reproductive rights. Like her friend, sophomore Avery Black, Marshell is also excited about the possibility of electing the nation’s first female president.
“Women deserve to have power over their own bodies,” Marshell said. “We shouldn’t have to not be able to get an abortion just because of a president.”
Mary Holman, an 80-year-old retiree from Fort Atkinson, Wis., said she hasn’t been to a rally since former President Barack Obama’s first campaign in 2008. But Holman said she decided to get off the sidelines this cycle because she views the election as a fight to preserve democracy.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will auction off state lands in popular northern counties next month.
The public land — in Aitkin, Cook, Itasca, and St. Louis counties — will go up for sale during the Department of Natural Resource’s annual online public land sale from Nov. 7 to 21.
“These rural and lakeshore properties may appeal to adjacent landowners or offer recreational opportunities such as space for a small cabin or camping,” the DNR said in a statement.
Properties will be available for bidding Nov. 7 through Nov. 21.
This all can trim for print: The properties include:
40 acres in Aitkin County, with a minimum bid of $85,000
44 acres in Cook County, minimum bid $138,000
1.9 acres in Itasca County, minimum bid $114,000
Minneapolis city officials say razor wire, concrete barriers and fencing will be removed from around the former Third Precinct police station – which was set ablaze by protesters after George Floyd’s police killing – in the next three weeks. The burned-out vestibule will be removed within three months with construction fencing to be erected closer to the building.
This week, Minneapolis City Council members have expressed frustration that four years after the protests culminated in a fire at the police station, the charred building still stands and has become a “prop” some conservatives use to rail against city leadership. Most recently, GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance made a stop outside the building and criticized Gov. Tim Walz’s handling of the 2020 riots.
On Thursday, the council voted 8-3 to approve a resolution calling for “immediate cleanup, remediation, and beautification of the 3000 Minnehaha site including but not limited to the removal of fencing, jersey barriers, barbed wire, and all other exterior blight.”
Council Member Robin Wonsley said the city needs to acknowledge that many police officers stationed in the Third Precinct “waged racist and violent actions” against residents for decades.
Council Member Aurin Chowdhury said the council wants the building cleaned up and beautified “immediately.”
“We cannot allow for this corner to be a backdrop for those who wish to manipulate the trauma of our city for political gain,” Chowdhury said.
Council Member Katie Cashman said the council shouldn’t be divided by “right-wing figures posing in front of the Third Precinct and pandering to conservative interests.”
“It’s really important for us to stay united in our goal, to achieve rehabilitation of this site in a way that advances racial healing and acknowledgement of the past trauma in this community, and to not let those figures divide us here,” she said.
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