Former GOP operative, donor gets 21 years on sex trafficking conviction

Updated: 3:10 p.m.

Former Minnesota Republican Party operative and donor Anton “Tony” Lazzaro was sentenced in federal district court Wednesday to 21 years in prison for sex trafficking.

After a 10-day trial in March, a jury found Lazzaro, 32, guilty of bringing five teenage girls to his apartment in downtown Minneapolis and paying them for sex, in violation of federal sex trafficking laws.

The victims testified against Lazzaro at trial. So did his co-defendant and recruiter Gisela Castro Medina, who pleaded guilty and faces sentencing next month.

Judge Patrick Schiltz also ordered Lazzaro to forfeit his luxury condominium. Prosecutors asked the judge to impose a 30-year sentence. Defense attorneys argued that Lazzaro should serve no more than the 10-year mandatory minimum.

In explaining his sentence, Schiltz noted the “soulless, almost mechanical nature” of Lazzaro’s scheme. “It is almost as if Mr. Lazzaro set up a sex-trafficking assembly line,” the judge said.

But Schiltz also said that while Lazzaro’s behavior was reprehensible, he did not use force, threats, fraud or coercion, and that the very longest sentences should be reserved for the very worst traffickers.

Among those testifying during the hearing, a woman identified in court documents as Victim D said “at the age of 16, my life took a turn for the worse, and Tony is to blame.”

During Lazzaro’s trial, the judge and attorneys addressed the victims by name in court, but MPR News is not using their names to protect their privacy.

Victim D went on to say that she had been an honor roll student, but nearly missed graduating high school because she started drinking heavily. “I began to take three showers a day because I never felt clean. I could always feel Tony’s touch on my body,” the woman said.

All five victims testified at trial

Earlier Wednesday, Lazzaro filed a motion for a new trial — indicating a likely appeal.

Prior to his arrest, Lazzaro had been an up-and-coming activist and financier in the Minnesota GOP. He was close friends with former state party chair Jennifer Carnahan, and gave tens of thousands of dollars to Republican organizations and candidates, including the campaign of Carnahan’s late husband, Rep. Jim Hagedorn. 

In late 2020, the mother of a Twin Cities girl who was then 16, became suspicious when her daughter’s grades started slipping. The normally outgoing teen became isolated from her friends, and large, unexplained deposits appeared in her bank account. 

The mother contacted an anti-trafficking organization, then the FBI. Agents learned that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension had already been looking into other parents’ complaints, and the two agencies began a joint investigation.

In August of 2021, a grand jury indicted Lazzaro on sex trafficking charges. His arrest was a major factor in Carnahan’s resignation as GOP chair a week later. The grand jury also indicted Lazzaro’s co-defendant and recruiter, Gisela Castro Medina, 21.

At trial, jurors heard testimony from all five of the victims listed in the indictment. At the time they met Lazzaro in 2020, four of them were 16 and one was 15. They shared similar stories in court. The youngest, known as Victim C in legal documents, testified that Castro Medina befriended her on social media and told her about a wealthy friend. 

The young woman described how she and two younger friends sneaked away from a slumber party and took an Uber that Lazzaro paid for to his apartment in the Hotel Ivy in downtown Minneapolis.

Victim C and the four others each told jurors that Lazzaro gave them cash and gifts after they had sex with him. Prosecutors corroborated their testimony with phone and rideshare records.

Co-defendant: Lazzaro specified ‘broken girls’

Castro Medina testified against Lazzaro as part of a plea deal. She told jurors about meeting Lazzaro when she was 18 on a “sugar daddy” dating site that matches young women with typically older, wealthy men.

Castro Medina said that Lazzaro soon asked her to find “broken girls” for him on social media, who were around age 16 and were thin, white and petite. Lazzaro gave Castro Medina around $50,000 in cash and gifts including a car.

Lazzaro, who took the stand in his own defense, admitted having sex with the five teens. But he was adamant that the gifts and cash that he gave them were not in exchange for sex.

At sentencing, Lazzaro did not apologize to the victims. Wearing an orange jail uniform, he started his statement with a joke, then criticized prosecutors and the way they presented their evidence. Lazzaro reiterated earlier assertions that the gifts he gave the girls were not payments in exchange for sex. He also objected to Schiltz’s order requiring him to forfeit his $875,000 condo to pay restitution.

Lazzaro’s attorneys tried to argue that most of the girls could legally consent to sex under Minnesota law, but Judge Schiltz wouldn’t allow the defense to air that claim at trial because the case centered on federal sex trafficking laws, which prohibit paying anyone under 18 for sex. 

In a filing last week, Lazzaro’s attorney Daniel Gerdts argued that his client should serve no more than 10 years in part because “all of the minors were eager and excited” about their brief relationships with Lazzaro, and that Congress’ intent in passing the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act was to protect minor victims from threats and coercion by a third party.

Gerdts said previously that in most sex trafficking cases, the victims do not benefit financially.

Prosecutors had requested a 30-year sentence. In her own filing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Provinzino calls Lazzaro “every parent’s worst nightmare, and the reason that federal laws protect minors.”  

Provinzino also says the defendant “lied with abandon on the witness stand,” and “at no point has Lazzaro expressed a single shred of remorse.” 

Castro Medina faces sentencing Sept. 5, and is not subject to the mandatory minimum because of her plea agreement.

In filing a motion for a new trial on Wednesday, ahead of the sentencing hearing, Gerdts said defense investigators allege that five of the jurors in Lazzaro’s trial “likely concealed or were otherwise dishonest” about key information they shared during jury selection.

In one instance, the defense claims that a juror did not reveal that her sister-in-law is a domestic abuse advocate.

Gerdts also alleges that another juror “did not disclose her very strong anti-Trump political views” and “her support of the ‘Me Too’ movement.”

The defense also alleges that prosecutors deliberately misled the jury when questioning Castro Medina about a photo that was introduced as evidence.

After the hearing St. Paul attorney Jeff Anderson, who represents one of the victims, told reporters that he will press forward with a civil suit against Lazzaro now that the criminal case has concluded.

• Amid Feeding Our Future convictions, another nonprofit seeks reinstatement to food program
• Supreme Court upholds a Biden-era rule regulating ghost guns
• Police looking for teen suspects in Minneapolis robbery spree
• MnDOT warns of E-ZPass text scams demanding outstanding toll fines