MIAMI – A Miami-Dade detective reported that a human trafficking victim who was at the for-profit Broward Transition Center said she had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with her husband and four children while pregnant last year.
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After flying from Texas to South Florida, she got separated from her husband and ended up homeless with her kids in a hotel in Miami Springs, according to the trafficking squad detective’s request for an arrest warrant. Soon after, the Department of Children and Families picked up her kids.
With false promises of helping her to get an apartment so she could be reunited with her children, the woman told the detective she decided to work for Liliannet “Lili″ Betancourt and Philbrine “Dolla” Bell, a couple she grew to fear, according to the arrest warrant.
While she was sexually exploited, the woman reported Betancourt, 32, of Hialeah, received CashApp payments and served as a translator with Bell, 36, of South Miami Heights, a convicted felon who owns Rich Dolla Management and Promotions, records show.
The woman reported Bell beat her up several times for hiding cash, when he found a Western Union receipt after she sent money to a nephew in Nicaragua, and when she missed sex work to go to a supervised DCF visit with her children, records show.
There were other victims with similar stories. A pregnant teen who met a detective at Jackson Memorial Hospital reported that after she ran away from home, she met Bell in Miami’s Liberty City and he took her to work at a Woodsprings Suites Hotel, at 16055 SW 117 Ave., records show.
The teenage girl reported that she didn’t know who the father of her baby was because Bell forced her into sex work seven days a week, 10 to 15 times a day, and at $240, unprotected sex was more profitable, according to the detective’s report.
Both the woman and the teen described how Bell would hit and choke them when they didn’t meet the quotas he set for them, and the woman said Bell gave her crack cocaine and told her to take it, so she could have sex with more men, according to the report.
Miami-Dade deputies were familiar with Bell. When he was 24 years old, he was armed with a revolver when they arrested him for the attempted murder of a police officer after an armed robbery at a Quality Inn on U.S.-1, near Southwest 144 Street. His 22-year-old co-conspirator used a child to shield himself during a standoff, police said.
According to the Florida Department of Corrections, a few weeks after his 26th birthday, a Miami-Dade judge sentenced Bell to 12 years in prison for armed robbery and false imprisonment in a case that had started when he was 20 years old. He left prison when he was 32.
According to the recent Miami-Dade arrest warrant for Betancourt, the human trafficking case was related to an investigation that ran from April 2023 to Feb. 10.
Betancourt has an arrest record. Miami-Dade court records show seven years ago Aventura police officers arrested her for grand theft and uttering a forged instrument. The case closed on April 18, 2023, after prosecutors dropped it.
Betancourt was back behind bars. Records show deputies arrested her at 11 a.m., on Tuesday at the Broward County main jail in Fort Lauderdale and Miami-Dade correctional deputies booked her at 12:35 p.m., at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.
Betancourt appeared in court on Wednesday facing charges of human trafficking and deriving support from the proceeds of prostitution. A judge ordered her to stay away from the victims and wear an electronic monitor if released. Her bond was $22,500.
Court records did not show a case against Bell had been filed. Betancourt’s arraignment hearing is at 9:30 a.m., on April 1. Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Jason Bloch is set to preside over her case.
Local 10 News Assignment Desk Editor Mercedes Cevallos contributed to this report.