Anton Lazzaro, a wannabe playboy on Instagram who used his riches to pump up the Minnesota Republican Social gathering and recruit teenage women for intercourse, was convicted by a Minnesota jury Friday of intercourse trafficking minors.
At trial, prosecutors laid out how Lazzaro preyed on “damaged” women—to which his protection lawyer countered had been merely women he was making an attempt to “repair.” The victims testified that Lazzaro would take them to his swanky Minneapolis condominium, the place he’d ply them with Everclear, the strongest liquor available on the market.
Lazzaro paid tens of hundreds of {dollars} to have intercourse with highschool college students, and even used one as a recruiter. Days after his arrest in August 2021, the feds caught up with that affiliate, Gisela Castro Medina, and finally turned her right into a witness in opposition to him.
Lazzaro remained defiant from jail, borrowing a lame conservative speaking level and chalking up the case to a political prosecution for his ties to the GOP.
Federal Election Fee data present Lazzaro donated to Republicans for practically a decade, together with his contributions ramping up sharply in 2016. He additionally performed a bit half in former President Donald Trump’s anti-democratic makes an attempt to stay within the White Home after shedding in 2020, as Lazzaro was on the shortlist of the Minnesota’s GOP slate of “alternate” presidential electors who might substitute for any lacking delegates, in keeping with state election data.
On-line, he posed as a rich entrepreneur, sharing photos of himself on personal jets, waving stacks of money, and driving shirtless in his crimson Ferrari. And he touted his Republican connections, utilizing his private web site to show an image of him alongside Trump, then-Vice President Mike Pence, and a number of tv appearances on Fox Information.
The court docket case, which lasted a year-and-a-half, underwent weird twists as Lazzaro turned on his legal professionals and briefly represented himself, losing time making an attempt to get his Ferrari again as a substitute of mounting an clever protection.
The Day by day Beast first revealed in 2021 that the FBI had been investigating Lazzaro and had raided his house. When requested about his preying on teenage women weeks earlier than his arrest, he threatened to dox this reporter and run a web based harassment marketing campaign.
The Day by day Beast additionally solely reported how a former Lazzaro enterprise affiliate serving time in jail on drug costs tried to report particulars about Lazzaro’s predatory conduct to the FBI, solely to be reprimanded by Bureau of Jail guards.
That ex-felon, Ben Freedland, completed serving his jail sentence and attended the trial. He advised The Day by day Beast he was most disturbed by Lazzaro’s unusual obsession with one other convicted predator who sexually abused teenage women: Jeffrey Epstein.
“One of many wildest issues to return out at trial is a social media submit that Tony made on the one 12 months anniversary of Jeff Epstein’s dying: an image of them along with a caption that mentioned, ‘relaxation in peace brother,’” Freedland mentioned.