2nd victim sues, says Hotel Ivy staff knowingly aided Anton Lazzaro’s sex trafficking of teen girls

A second woman is suing the onetime operators of a luxury downtown Minneapolis hotel and condo building alleging that its staff “were integral” in accommodating former Minnesota GOP operative Anton “Tony” Lazzaro’s repeated sex trafficking of her and others when they were teenagers.

An anonymous “Jane Doe,” who was 16 at the time of the trafficking, is the sole plaintiff in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.

The suit names as defendants Heartland Ivy Partners LLC, the Minneapolis-based owner of the Hotel Ivy; Ivy Equity Partners LLC and Wischermann Partners Inc. — which owned the hotel at the time of Lazzaro’s crimes but sold the property in 2022. The hotel’s current ownership is not named.

The woman’s attorney, Jeff Montpetit, said that specific Hotel Ivy staff members were not named as defendants because “employers are responsible for the acts and omissions of their employees.”

A federal jury found Lazzaro, now 34, guilty of child sex trafficking in 2023 after a trial that featured emotional testimony from five girls who were between the ages of 15 and 17 when he paid them for sex inside his 19th-floor condo at the Hotel Ivy Residences in 2020. Another of the girls filed a similar suit late last year.

Montpetit said the testimony and evidence from the criminal trial “provides a detailed basis in many of the allegations in this civil complaint.” Among the witnesses was co-defendant Gisela Castro Medina — a young woman who pleaded guilty and testified against Lazzaro, admitting to recruiting young girls for Lazzaro to pay for sex. She was sentenced in 2023 to three years in prison.

Patrick Kelly, an attorney for the defendants in both cases, said in response to the suits that “the person responsible for the harm to the plaintiffs is Anton Lazzaro, who has been convicted of these crimes and is presently serving his sentence in federal prison. We will be defending these lawsuits and will have no further comment.”

Lazzaro was a rising Minnesota Republican operative at the time of his 2021 arrest and gave more than $240,000 to GOP campaigns and political committees, according to state and federal campaign finance committees.

Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz sentenced Lazzaro to 21 years in federal prison, and Lazzaro is being held at the Sandstone Federal Correctional Institution with an August 2039 release date.

The latest suit’s overarching contention is that the front desk staff “repeatedly interacted with, observed and screened each of the teenage girls coming to Lazzaro’s condominium to engage in sex acts in exchange for cash and gifts.”

The defendants “knew or should have known that Lazzaro was using the Hotel Ivy ... to facilitate the trafficking of multiple minor girls including Jane Doe,” the suit noted.

Further, the filing alleged, the defendants “had every opportunity” to intercede but allowed the sex trafficking to continue while observing that the girls “were dressed inappropriately for their age” and often visiting late at night or in the middle of the night.

“The Hotel Ivy property and the services provided by the the Hotel Ivy staff were integral to Lazzaro’s sex trafficking scheme” that formed an “assembly line” of young visitors, the suit continued.

Jane Doe’s suit also pointed out that the Hotel Ivy staff had been trained on how to recognize signs of sex trafficking and that the front officer manager testified in the criminal trial that her staff had received the training.

Among the specific allegations in the lawsuit:

One girl, after being kicked out of Lazzaro’s condo, told front-desk staff about Lazzaro’s sex trafficking, and that he was paying the girls with money and gifts. She asked workers to remove her sister who was still in the condo, but they declined.

The first time that Jane Doe and a fellow underage friend went to the front desk to say they were here to see Tony, hotel staff responded with “of course you are.”

Lazzaro then gave staff permission to send the two of them up to his residence, and they were escorted by staff all the way to his condo.

“Staff repeatedly escorted each of Lazzaro’s teenage victims to the private elevator and then either rode the elevator with the girls and delivered them to [his] condominium or used their staff access to direct the elevator to the 19th floor,” according to the suit.

Another 16-year-old girl arrived at the Hotel Ivy with two others and heard staff tell Lazzaro “I have three beautiful women waiting here for you.”

The suit, which seeks an unspecified amount of damages, is accusing all defendants of counts that include “benefiting from a venture that violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act,” and alleges liability and vicarious liability. Under Minnesota law, the complaint also alleges violations of premises liability and negligence.