18 AUGUST 8, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Glendale man gets up to 14 years for pimping niece
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
RPOZARYCKI@RIDGEWOODTIMES.COM
@ROBBPOZ
The Glendale man who confessed
in June to forcing his teenage
niece and another girl into a life
of prostitution may serve the next 14
years in prison.
Eddy Florence, 34, of 70th Avenue
entered a guilty plea on June 24 to
sex traffi cking and endangering the
welfare of a child. Acting Queens
Supreme Court Justice Peter Vallone
Jr. ordered Florence on Aug. 1 to serve
7 to 14 years behind bars.
According to the charges, Florence
forced his 13-year-old niece into
sex sales out of his home that began
in about November 2017. He took
photos of her and included them
in advertisements on various
escort websites.
Various men came to Florence’s
home to have sex with his niece,
authorities said, and Florence
pocketed all of the proceeds
for himself.
Prosecutors noted that Florence
yelled violently at his niece and
threatened her whenever he felt she
wasn’t making enough money. The
criminal complaint noted that he
also allegedly provided her with
cocaine and other drugs to keep
Photo via Getty Images
her working.
An investigation found that
Florence allegedly brought the girl
and another young woman, 15, to a
Staten Island hotel between Dec. 10
and 13, 2017, where they performed
sexual acts with customers
who visited.
Members of the NYPD Narcotics
Borough Queens brought the
prostitution business to a halt on
Dec. 13, 2017, while executing a courtauthorized
search of Florence’s
residence as part of an investigation.
During the search, police recovered
small plastic bags of heroin, cocaine
and marijuana, as well as a credit card
embossing machine typically used to
create forged credit cards. They also
recovered Florence’s cellphone, which
is registered to a phone number used
in the online prostitution ads.
“Sex traffi cking is an incessant act of
brutality and degradation that could
scar its victims for life,” acting Queens
District Attorney John Ryan said on
Aug. 1. “I hope that these two victims
will be able to overcome this ordeal
and move forward in their lives. The
defendant is now going to prison.”
Thank you! QNS.com reached historic milestone in July
BY THE RIDGEWOOD TIMES STAFF
EDITORIAL@RIDGEWOODTIMES.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
July proved to be truly historic for
QNS.com, as the borough’s online
news leader achieved 1 million page
views in a month for the fi rst time.
QNS crossed that threshold on the
afternoon of July 31 and finished
the month with approximately
1,014,412 page views, which
accounts for the number of times
readers clicked on QNS stories.
That shattered the all-time record
of 886,931 page views set the month
before, in June. Overall page views
on QNS — the online home of The
Queens Courier, TimesLedger and
Ridgewood Times — are up about
39 percent so far this year.
It’s a tribute to the great stories
written by our team. July’s hit
stories included the Health
Department shutting down a
popular Maspeth pizzeria, a
Queens pharmacist and staff
busted for Medicaid fraud, a
rundown of the 10 Queens
neighborhoods with the priciest
home sales, a list of 11 great
Queens diners and the mysterious
appearance of an In-N-Out burger
on a Jamaica street.
The team includes editor-inchief
Robert Pozarycki, social
media manager Emily Davenport,
copy editor Katrina Medoff and
reporters Jenna Bagcal, Mark
Hallum, Carlotta Mohamed, Max
Parrott and Bill Parry.
We thank all of you for your
support and loyalty as we seek
to continue to break the biggest
news stories in Queens — and
more records!
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