Moira Penza
speaker
110 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Moira Penza’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Well, I'm a former prosecutor and I've prosecuted very similar crimes back when I was at the Eastern District of New York. And what we've seen is that the government has really laid out a strong case. of the elements of sex trafficking. I think we've also seen them lay out a strong case for the RICO conspiracy charges as well.
But talking about the sex trafficking first, the most important things for the government to prove there is that there was commercial sex that was compelled through forced fraud or coercion. And so in this case, we have very clear commercial sex. So commercial sex is any time there is sex exchanged for a thing of value.
In a lot of sex trafficking prosecutions we've seen recently against high-profile individuals, we're not talking about an actual exchange of sex for money as one might traditionally think about sex trafficking. For example, in the Harvey Weinstein cases, you're talking about an exchange of sex for a position in the entertainment industry.
That's really what you're thinking about in terms of thing of value. Here, this is a somewhat unique case in terms of recent sex trafficking prosecutions in that we actually have participants in the Sex Act. We have the escorts who actually are being paid. Then you need the force, fraud, or coercion. And there, I think the government's laid out a very clear case as well.
We have incident after incident of physical violence against Ms. Ventura surrounding these freak-offs. We also have strong evidence of coercion. So where you have an individual who is... in a dynamic with an abuser where that abuser really has control over every aspect of her life.
So her career all the way down to what color she's painting her fingernails, that's going to take away an individual's agency. And so in that situation, it is much easier easier for somebody who intends to hurt somebody to do so. We also have the government introducing evidence of the threats against Ms. Ventura that the tapes of the freak-offs would be used if she were to leave him.
And so that's another really strong piece of evidence that we see as to the sex trafficking elements.
Absolutely. So racketeering laws do prosecute criminal organizations. That's absolutely true. And that's what the government is saying here. The government is saying that Sean Combs was able to operate the way that he did because he was in fact part of a criminal organization. that there were other individuals who helped facilitate the crimes that he is charged with.
And that expansion of the racketeering laws to prosecute crimes other than mob cases has been going on for a long time. So in the Eastern District of New York, you had the prosecution of soccer corruption under the racketeering laws. We've seen various opioid cases that are brought under the racketeering laws.
And in fact, I used the racketeering statute when I prosecuted Keith Raniere, who was the head of the NXIVM, what's colloquially called a sex cult. But there— My argument was, in fact, that Keith Raniere was running a criminal organization. He wasn't a cult leader. He was a crime boss. And that's really what you hear the government doing in this case as well.
And that's why we're getting testimony from assistants, other people in his entourage, other people who were employed by him, who saw what was happening and helped facilitate it, including by covering up his crimes.
Yes. So when the government is charging racketeering, they can say that an organization is entirely criminal or they can say that there is an association of individuals who together are committing crimes. And sometimes... an organization or the way that somebody is operating their businesses can help facilitate crimes.
So again, similarly in the case that I prosecuted, even though we talk about it as the NXIVM case, I did not charge NXIVM as a criminal organization. I charged Keith Raniere and his associates together as a criminal organization who were using NXIVM classes, the individuals who were taking NXIVM courses. to commit these crimes, sometimes as participants in the crime, sometimes as victims.
And so just because there can be legitimate purposes to an enterprise, same thing with the FIFA case, right? There can be legitimate purposes to an enterprise, but where an individual is working with others to commit crimes, even if they are also doing things that are legitimate, that can still be racketeering.
So they've charged Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy. So they have to show that he agreed with at least one other person to engage in racketeering. Then to actually figure that out, what you're looking for is two predicate acts of racketeering that other people were involved in facilitating. So, you know, there can be additional nuances to that as well.
But I think the government's going to want to make it easy for the jury and say, here are all these instances where the crime that Mr. Combs committed required other people's involvement. So that's I think the way that the government is going to lay it out. And in terms of whether they're there yet, I think they're getting there.
I think we've heard testimony that showed the involvement of other individuals We also had testimony from one of Mr. Combs' assistants, and he was going to take a fifth, so he was not going to testify, saying that he would be incriminating himself if he took the stand. And so he was actually granted immunity so that he would, in fact, testify.
And so having individuals who the government is actually saying were were part of this conspiracy testify about what they saw, what they did, that's going to be powerful evidence. And we still have weeks of trial to go.
Well, I think this is one of the toughest parts of the job as a prosecutor is really exercising that prosecutorial discretion. So just because somebody did engage in criminal conduct, just because somebody may have been a lower-ranking member of a criminal conspiracy, you may choose not to charge them with crimes, right?
In other situations, you might actually charge somebody with a crime and then they charge cooperate with the government and testify in exchange for the government eventually seeking leniency on their behalf. In other situations, and I can't speak to the exact specifics of how the government made the decision that they made, but in other situations,
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