Anton Lazzaro to be sentenced Aug. 9 for federal child sex trafficking conviction

Anton Lazzaro will be sentenced Aug. 9 for his conviction on child sex trafficking charges, delivered by a federal jury last week after a two-week trial.

Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz set Lazzaro's sentencing on Monday after a short hearing in which the 32-year-old Minneapolis businessman and Republican operative waived his right to have a jury decide which of his assets can be seized in connection with the convictions.

The jury on Friday took about two hours to convict Lazzaro of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of a minor and on all five of the separate child sex trafficking counts linked to victims ages 15 to 16.

Lazzaro will be sentenced ahead of his co-defendant, Gisela Castro Medina, 21, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and obstruction charges late last year and testified against Lazzaro during his trial. Castro Medina — and a then-16-year-old friend — first met Lazzaro in May 2020 on a "sugar daddy" dating website. She said he paid them both for sex, and eventually enlisted her to recruit other teen girls for him. Lazzaro paid Castro Medina more than $54,000 in cash and other goods in exchange for her services and, prosecutors said, for her silence as the FBI closed in on him.

Castro Medina will now be sentenced on Aug. 29, later than previously scheduled.

Jurors were scheduled to return to Schiltz's Minneapolis courtroom Monday to determine what property can be seized by the government in the case. But Lazzaro waived his right to have the jury decide and elected to have Schiltz make that ruling.

The property at issue includes multiple cellphones and a Ferrari prosecutors say was used to pick up one of the girls and to entice other would-be targets in posts Castro Medina made on social media.

Lazzaro and his attorneys separately said after Friday's verdict that they planned to appeal his conviction.