DETROIT – A clerk from the now-shuttered Victory Inn motel on Michigan Avenue is due in court Monday.
The motel now stands vacant and locked up after 200 federal agents and local police raided it back in January. Janette Gaggo is one of six people charged in the alleged drug and prostitution ring at the motel.
Gaggo faces a list of sex trafficking and drug distribution charges. She will be arraigned on more charges Monday afternoon. She also has a detention hearing.
Darrick Dernard Bell, Shelvie Lewis Avery, Terry Pruitt, Harold Lashawn Nero and Michael Anthony Randol also face similar charges -- view here.
Court records show the feds had an investigation into what was going on at the Victory Inn since this past September. The feds say an entire network of people were selling vast amounts of heroin and cocaine, and engaging in human trafficking. Investigators said 14 women were enslaved there to work as prostitutes.
Crime allegedly had taken over the entire motel on Michigan Avenue, and motel staff were part of it.
Despite a fence surrounding the building, there was a fire at the Victory Inn last week caused by scrappers and squatters. Authorities went back to the building to reinforce the fence and forced every door to stay open.
Feds: Victory Inn was drug dealing hub
Authorities said the defendants held meetings at the Victory Inn and used it as a hub for deliveries of cocaine and heroin. The indictment also says they “managed and controlled, including as occupants, and rented, leased, and profited from, and made available for use, rooms at the Victory Inn to conduct their organized narcotic distribution activities.”
The defendants also used the internal hotel video surveillance and human lookouts to monitor the organized narcotic distribution activities, according to the indictment.
The complaint lists Gaggo as an employee of the hotel and alleges she knowingly allowed the hotel to be used “for the purpose of unlawfully manufacturing, storing, distributing, and using Schedule I controlled substance and Schedule II controlled substance.”
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