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Indian sentenced in Nebraska minor sex trafficking case
Federal investigators said two girls aged 15 and 16 were trafficked to an Omaha hotel for commercial sex.
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Malvika Choudhary - Fri, 29, May 2026
- 17:07 EDT
- 39
Kavan Kumar Patel / X/ @HSIKansasCity
An Indian national from Gujarat was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the United States for his role in a sex trafficking case involving two minor girls at a hotel in Omaha, Nebraska.
Kavankumar Patel, 27, was sentenced on May 26 by Senior U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Bataillon after being convicted on two counts of sex trafficking of a minor, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Nebraska said.
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After serving his sentence, Patel will be placed on five years of supervised release and faces deportation because he is in the United States illegally.
The case came to light on Jan. 6, 2025, when Omaha police officers responding to a theft report at the AmericInn hotel discovered indications of human trafficking. A subsequent investigation by the Homeland Security Task Force and the Omaha Police Department led to the recovery of two girls, aged 15 and 16, who had been brought from another state to the hotel and exploited for commercial sex.
According to prosecutors, the girls told investigators that traffickers had instructed them to have sex with hotel employees in exchange for a reduced room rate and threatened that they would be forced out of the hotel if they refused.
Court records show that two hotel employees paid traffickers to have sex with one of the minors, while another employee had sex with the second victim.
Patel, who worked at the hotel, admitted to using money from the hotel's cash register to pay traffickers to have sex with one of the girls. Prosecutors said hotel employees allowed the traffickers and victims to stay at the property for several days while online advertisements were used to arrange commercial sex acts involving the minors.
The girls told investigators they had limited access to food and felt they had no option but to comply with the traffickers' demands.
“The Homeland Security Task Force rescued these children from a living nightmare,” U.S. Attorney Lesley Woods said in a statement.
The investigation involved Homeland Security Investigations, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division and the Omaha Police Department.
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