Long Island Marriott & Nassau County Hotel Sex Trafficking Lawsuit — Attorney911 Holds the Corporate Chains and Franchisors That Profit from Hourly Rentals, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider Who Knows How the Claims Machine Denies Trafficking Victims, We Preserve the 90-Day Security Footage and Guest Registration Records Before They Are Overwritten, TVPRA Civil Claims Under 18 U.S.C. § 1595, New York’s Expanded Statute of Limitations for Trafficking Survivors, the Firm Has Recovered Millions for Catastrophic Injury Victims — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

If You Are Reading This Page, It Is Probably About You

It is possible you did not even know the word for what was happening to you. A hotel room on Long Island — maybe in Uniondale, maybe in Hempstead, maybe in Massapequa, maybe out near the Meadowbrook. A door that did not open from the inside. The same man, or different men, coming back. Sometimes your phone was taken. Sometimes you were threatened. Sometimes drugs were used to keep you quiet. Sometimes you were simply exhausted and afraid. And someone paid for the room — every night, every week, every month — and that someone was the hotel.

You are reading this now. That means part of you already knows the truth: this was not a relationship. This was not a choice. This was a business, and the hotel room was its storefront.

If that is where you are — or where someone you love is — we want to speak with you. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We bring sex-trafficking cases against hotels and motels in federal court, including in the Eastern District of New York and the Southern District of New York, when the venue is right. We work these cases on contingency: no fee unless we win. The first call is free, twenty-four hours a day, and you can reach us at 1-888-ATTY-911.

The Federal Law That Gives You The Right To Sue

The hotel cannot just point at the trafficker and say “we didn’t do anything.” Federal law says otherwise. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, at 18 U.S.C. § 1595(a), gives you the right to sue not only the trafficker but anyone who knowingly took money from the trafficking venture:

“An individual who is a victim of a violation of this chapter may bring a civil action against the perpetrator (or whoever knowingly benefits, or attempts or conspires to benefit, financially or by receiving anything of value from participation in a venture which that person knew or should have known has engaged in an act in violation of this chapter) in an appropriate district court of the United States and may recover damages and reasonable attorneys fees.”

That sentence does three things that change everything for a survivor reading this page.

1. It says the victim, not the government, can sue. You do not have to wait for a prosecutor to act. You do not have to wait for a criminal conviction. The civil case is yours.
2. It says the defendant is not only the trafficker. Anyone who benefited financially from the venture — including a hotel that rented the room — is on the hook.
3. It says the knowledge standard is “knew or should have known.” You do not have to prove the hotel was handed a memo saying “we are trafficking someone in room 214.” You have to prove what a reasonable hotel operator would have understood from the warning signs in front of its own staff.

Who We Sue — The Operator, And Often The Brand Behind The Sign

There are usually two layers of defendants in a hotel trafficking case, and we name both.

The first layer is the operator. That is the LLC or person who actually ran the front desk, decided who got keys, signed the room-night ledgers, and pocketed the cash. This is the person or company whose name is on the property tax bill and the County Clerk filing. This is almost always the first defendant we name, and this is the defendant the new Nassau County ordinance hits directly.

The second layer is the brand. If the property carried a Wyndham flag (Days Inn, Super 8, Ramada, Howard Johnson, Travelodge, Microtel, Wingate, Baymont, La Quinta), a Marriott flag (Westin, Sheraton, Renaissance, Fairfield, Residence Inn, Courtyard), a Hilton flag (DoubleTree, Hampton, Embassy Suites, Hilton Garden Inn), a Choice flag (Comfort, Quality Inn, Sleep Inn, Econo Lodge, Rodeway Inn, WoodSpring Suites, Suburban Studios, Cambria), an IHG flag (Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Candlewood Suites, Staybridge Suites), or a Hyatt flag, then a national brand sits behind the front desk. Brand companies collect franchise fees, mandate brand standards, supply reservation and loyalty systems, and demand that properties meet operational standards — and they can be pulled into the case when the right facts are there.

Federal courts have split on how far this reach extends. In Doe #1 v. Red Roof Inns, Inc., 21 F.4th 714 (11th Cir. 2021), the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of franchisor defendants from a § 1595 case, holding that a remote franchisor that merely collected royalties was not a “participant in a venture” within the meaning of the statute. That case was a defense win — and we will not pretend otherwise. The hotel brand will use it.

But the law has continued to move. In A.G. v. Northbrook Industries, Inc., the Eleventh Circuit on March 30, 2026 vacated summary judgment for the hotel operator and remanded, holding that “ordinary room rental alone” is not enough to prove participation in a venture — but active support or facilitation of a trafficking operation is. The court reaffirmed that constructive knowledge of the venture — not knowledge of the specific victim — is enough. And in M.A. v. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc., No. 2:19-cv-00849 (S.D. Ohio Sept. 22, 2025), Chief Judge Marbley denied Wyndham-area operator defendants’ motion for summary judgment, holding that renting hotel rooms could itself satisfy the “knowing benefit” and “participation in a venture” elements when the operator had the requisite knowledge.

The current state of the law: the operator almost always faces liability on the right facts. The brand is harder to reach but not unreachable — and the harder we make the brand’s day in discovery, the more often those cases resolve before trial.

What We Have To Prove — And Why It Is Not As Hard As You Think

The hotel will tell you that you have to prove the front desk knew you were being trafficked, in writing, with a memo, while you were being sold from the room down the hall. You do not.

What you have to prove is the four-element framework federal courts apply:

1. Knowingly benefited. The hotel took in the room revenue. The longer the trafficking went on, the more nights it took in, the more obvious this becomes.
2. Participation in a venture. The operator did more than hand over a key. It kept the same room reserved. It looked the other way when housekeeping was refused. It accepted cash. It kept quiet when the same man came in with a different woman every week.
3. The venture violated the TVPRA. Sex trafficking is the violation. The trafficking was real. The venture element is satisfied.
4. Knew or should have known. This is where the red flags come in — and they are not subtle.

The Evidence Clock — What Exists, Who Holds It, How Fast It Dies

This is the single most urgent thing on this page. The hotel is not legally required to keep most of the proof you need forever. The proof dies on a clock, and the clock starts the moment you leave the property.

The single most important sentence on this page is the next one. We send a litigation-hold and preservation letter the day you call us. That letter freezes the camera footage, the PMS records, the key-card logs, and the housekeeping notes. The hotel is then legally on notice — and if it lets the records die anyway, the judge can tell the jury to assume the missing records would have proved your case. That is not a threat. It is the federal civil rule, and it is one of the most powerful tools we have.

What Your Case Is Worth

We will not promise you a number on this page. Anyone who promises a number before they have read the medical chart, the hotel’s records, and the police reports is guessing. But we will tell you the things that move the number up.

• Severity and duration of the trafficking. The longer it went on, the more the lifetime-care math grows.
• Age at the start. A case that began at sixteen reads differently to a jury than one that began at thirty-two — not because one matters more, but because the lost childhood has a dollar value.
• Physical injury. Burns, bruises, broken bones, sexually transmitted infections, traumatic brain injury from being struck — all documented, all compensable.
• The depth of the PTSD. Many survivors meet full criteria for lifetime PTSD under the DSM-5. Many develop major depressive disorder. Many develop substance-use disorder that began inside the trafficking. These are diagnosable, documented, compensable conditions.
• Lost earning capacity. A high-school diploma that never got finished. A nursing career that never started. Years of wages that were never earned.
• Punitive damages. Where the hotel’s conduct was wanton or showed a conscious disregard for your safety, the jury can add punishment damages on top of compensatory damages. The recent federal case against a Georgia motel — J.G. v. Northbrook Industries, Inc., tried in the Northern District of Georgia before Judge Sarah E. Geraghty, verdict returned July 25, 2025 — resulted in $10 million in compensatory damages and $30 million in punitive damages, a total of $40 million, the first civil TVPRA case to reach a jury verdict in the country. That verdict is on appeal and is not final; we cite it for what it shows about the kind of conduct juries punish, not as a promise about your case.

We have also seen defendants settle quietly when the proof is bad. In June 2024, Red Roof Inns settled an Atlanta-area sex-trafficking case on the eve of trial. The terms were confidential and the amount was not disclosed, but the settlement was real. And there are several reported multi-million-dollar settlements in the Wyndham-related docket in Stockbridge, Georgia, and elsewhere. We cannot promise a settlement in your case, but we can promise that the proof and the law together put the hotel in a place it does not want to be.

For context: if your case involves the kind of lasting harm federal juries have begun to recognize, a realistic range for the strongest cases can run into the millions and tens of millions of dollars, with punitive damages where the conduct warrants them. We will give you our honest, written case-by-case valuation once we have the records.

The New Nassau County Ordinance — How It Strengthens Your Case

Before this April, a hotel on Long Island could rent by the hour to the same trafficker for years without violating any single county rule. That is no longer the law. The new Nassau County ordinance:

• Imposes an eight-hour minimum stay. A hotel that rents by the hour is now breaking county law. We will pull the records.
• Forces guest ID collection and five-year retention. The same property management system that recorded the trafficking is now required by law to record the ID. The records are required to survive five years.
• Forces 90-day security-camera retention. The footage that proves who came and went is now required to exist for at least 90 days.
• Carries civil penalties of $500 to $5,000 per violation. Each rental in violation is a separate violation. A hotel that rented to your trafficker once a week for a year just generated 52 violations — at minimum $26,000, and at the top of the range $260,000 in penalties that can be used as evidence of willful disregard.

The Suffolk County bill is similar. Both statutes were passed with bipartisan support after the Newsday investigation. Neither was written with you in mind, but both can be used for you. We will.

The Lawyers Who Will Run Your Case

We are a small firm by design, because we believe the survivor in a trafficking case deserves the lawyers themselves, not a rotating cast of associates.

Ralph Manginello is the managing partner of The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. He has been licensed to practice law for 27+ years since November 6, 1998, in Texas state courts (Texas Bar #24007597) and in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, including its bankruptcy court. He has tried personal-injury, wrongful-death, commercial-vehicle, and catastrophic-injury cases across that entire career. Before law school, Ralph was a journalist, and he still approaches every case the way a reporter would: read the record, find the truth, and put it in front of the right audience. Ralph’s work on commercial-truck cases has been a defining part of the firm’s practice, and the firm has been admitted to the Million Dollar Trial Lawyers and the Pro Bono College of the State Bar of Texas. He can be reached directly at his page or at 1-888-ATTY-911.

Lupe Peña is the firm’s associate attorney. He has been licensed for 13+ years since December 6, 2012, also in Texas state courts (Texas Bar #24084332) and in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Before joining our firm representing injured people, Lupe spent years on the other side of the bar, working as an insurance-defense attorney at a national defense firm. He knows the playbook on the insurance side from the inside — the way adjusters set reserves, the way defense lawyers value claims, the way companies try to settle cheap and early. He uses that knowledge now on your side of the table. Lupe grew up in Sugar Land, Texas, the third generation of his family in that part of the country. He is a fluent Spanish speaker — Hablamos Español — and he can take a survivor’s statement and answer every question in Spanish without an interpreter. He can be reached at his page.

The firm’s practice areas, including commercial-vehicle, brain-injury, wrongful-death, premises-liability, refinery, construction, and toxic-tort work, are listed on our practice-areas page. The trafficking cases we now accept fit naturally alongside that work because the proof architecture — preservation letters, federal civil procedure, expert preparation, life-care planning, defense-side playbook recognition — is the same architecture we already use.

What If You Are Worried About Retaliation Or Public Exposure

The trafficking was not your choice. The case is not your shame. Your name is not the story.

We will file the case under a pseudonym where the court allows it. In federal trafficking cases under 18 U.S.C. § 1595, courts routinely permit “Jane Doe” or “John Doe” pleading for survivors, especially where there is risk of retaliation by the trafficker or community stigma against the survivor. We will request it at the earliest opportunity.

We will not put you on the stand unless you are ready and we believe it serves your case. The defense will want to depose you. We will prepare you carefully, with a victim advocate present where possible. We will pace the discovery to your pace, not theirs.

If the hotel’s lawyers or the trafficker’s people contact you directly, do not respond. Forward the message to us. Direct contact by a represented party’s lawyer is one of the clearest ethical violations in the profession; we will not let it pass.

If You Are Ready To Talk

We are ready when you are.

Call 1-888-ATTY-911 — a real person at our firm, twenty-four hours a day, every day. The first call is free, confidential, and carries no obligation. If we take the case, you pay nothing unless we win. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC, a trial firm that takes New York cases in federal court, working with local counsel where required, and we have been doing this work for more than twenty-four years.

You can also reach us through our contact page or read about the lawyers who would run your case on Ralph’s page and Lupe’s page.

Hablamos Español. Si usted o alguien que usted conoce fue víctima de trata de personas en un hotel o motel del condado de Nassau, llámenos. Podemos atender su llamada y representarlo en español sin necesidad de intérprete. El número es el mismo: 1-888-ATTY-911.

You survived something no one should live through. There is a federal case to be made. There is a New York record that supports it. There is a new local ordinance that strengthens it. There are lawyers who have spent their careers on the other side of this fight and now spend them on yours. The hotel that took the money will answer for it.

The next move is yours.