Lawrence “Larry” Ray, the man convicted of running a multimillion-dollar sex trafficking and forced labor scheme targeting New York college students, among others, was sentenced Friday to 60 years in prison.
Ray, 63, was dragged into a Manhattan federal courtroom at around 10:05 a.m., dressed in a wrinkled khaki uniform and shackled but not handcuffed. Several of his victims were present at the expected sentence.
Handing down the 60-year sentence nearly two hours later, US District Judge Lewis J. Liman stressed that he wanted to make sure Ray spent the rest of his life in prison.
Prosecutors requested that he be sentenced to life behind bars, while Ray’s defense attorneys asked for 15 years, the mandatory minimum.
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He confronted his accusers during victim impact statements. He lifted his head and looked directly at each of his victims with no visible sign of remorse or shame.
Attorney Brooke Cucinella read a statement on behalf of Ray’s sex trafficking victim, her former client.
“The experience of being sex trafficked haunts me today,” she said. The victim said Ray “destroyed” her life and “separated” her family from her, and sexually groomed her to earn money by prostitution from her. She recalled how he once defied him, ending up with a plastic bag around her head and being suffocated with it “over and over again.”
“I barely have the energy to exist,” he said.
BRONXVILLE, NY – FEBRUARY 12: An exterior view of Sarah Lawrence College is seen on February 12, 2020 in Bronxville, New York. Lawrence Ray, the father of a former student at the school, has been charged with extortion, sex trafficking and other charges related to his alleged abuse of multiple students.
(Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
Another victim recalled attempting suicide “more than once.”
“He took 10 years of my life,” the victim told the court.
After all the victims and parties had spoken, Ray addressed the court in a brief statement. He thanked the judge and then said: “These three years (in prison) have been hard. I’ve had COVID twice and I’m in pain all the time.”
She then went on to describe her health conditions and that she lost the last people in her life over the holidays: her father, stepfather and stepmother within a week.
Lawrence Ray posing for an undated photo.
(Photo by David Handschuh/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
The Piscataway, New Jersey man was first charged in 2020 and convicted in April 2022 of 15 counts of extortion, violent assault, sex trafficking, forced labor, money laundering and tax evasion.
“Lawrence Ray’s crimes were egregious,” prosecutors wrote in recent court documents.
According to prosecutors, Ray moved into his daughter’s dormitory at New York’s Sarah Lawrence College in 2010, when he first met the group of students he would soon target.
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Lawrence Ray, also known as “Lawrence Grecco,” was convicted of various crimes, including sex trafficking, extortion, and the forced labor of college-age individuals.
(Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
Sarah Lawrence College is a small liberal arts college located in Bronxville, New York, with a population of about 1,675 undergraduate and graduate students. At the time, she had just been released from prison for committing securities fraud.
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He gained the trust of his daughter’s roommates and classmates and groomed them before carrying out his multimillion-dollar plan for more than a decade, and even elsewhere, at a property in North Carolina.
Federal prosecutors suggested a life sentence for Sarah Lawrence’s convicted sex trafficker, Lawrence Ray.
(DOJ)
“Over a period of years, he intentionally inflicted brutal, lifelong harm on innocent victims whom he groomed and abused into submission,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum to the judge earlier this month. “Once he established control over his victims, he exploited them for his own gain through extortion, sex trafficking and forced labor.”
Ray “unleashed a campaign of terror on his victims” and isolated them from their parents, then used their fear to torture and exert control over them. He targeted his fears and insecurities and would manipulate some of his victims into making false confessions “in order to cause alleged harm” to Ray and his inner circle. He would then extort his victims for their false confessions.
It also forced some into physical labor or sex trafficking.
READ THE LETTER FROM THE PROSECUTORS TO THE JUDGE:
In one case, Ray forced a woman into prostitution to pay Ray money she didn’t actually owe him. His targeting of the woman in this case began years before.
Prosecutors said Ray “sexually groomed this victim and collected sexually explicit photographs and other personal information which he then used to coerce her into continuing commercial sex acts.” He would be physically violent towards her, including in one instance of her when he tied her to a chair, “put a plastic bag over her head and nearly suffocated her,” authorities said.
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He made “millions of dollars in proceeds from the forced prostitution of this victim,” authorities said.
READ THE LETTER FROM THE DEFENSE LAWYERS TO THE JUDGE:
Ray’s tactics allegedly included “sleep deprivation, psychological and sexual humiliation, verbal abuse, threats of physical violence, threats of criminal legal action, estrangement of victims from their families, and exploitation of victims’ mental health vulnerabilities.”
Meanwhile, Ray’s defense team argued that their client’s actions are a result of the abuse he experienced when he was younger.
“The physical, sexual and psychological abuse Lawrence Ray suffered as a child and throughout his youth bears a striking resemblance to the conduct underlying the crimes for which he is now convicted,” the defense argued in its own sentencing memorandum.
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They said Ray’s child abuse “started almost immediately.” Ray, born Lawrence Grecco, “spent his early adulthood vainly competing for his mother’s affections.”
Fox News Digital’s Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.
