Georgia hotel owner who forced women to have sex for housing pleads guilty
A former hotel owner in Bartow County pleaded guilty to coercing labor and sex acts. He’ll be sentenced in September.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Shreesh Tiwari forced women he hired to have sex with him in exchange for living in the hotel.
Channel 2 Action News first reported Tiwari was under investigation in 2021, when the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced he was being investigated for human trafficking out of the hotel.
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As previously reported, Tiwari allegedly had forced women to engage in sex acts with him in exchange for housing, and if they refused, he would evict them from the Cartersville hotel he managed.
On June 1, the Indian national and U.S. permanent resident pleaded guilty to trafficking with respect to peonage, slavery, involuntary servitude, or forced labor, the USDOJ announced.
Related to his plea, officials said he took advantage of his victim’s circumstances to coerce her into sexual acts.
Tiwari “hired the victim to work as a house cleaner at the motel. Tiwari knew that, prior to arriving at the Budgetel, the victim had experienced homelessness, struggled with a heroin addiction and lost custody of her young child,” USDOJ said in a statement. “Tiwari promised the victim that he would help her regain custody of her child by providing her with pay, an apartment, and an attorney.”
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Rather than keep his promises, the DOJ said Tiwari instead “monitored the victim’s interactions with motel guests and employees and forbade her from speaking to them” while making “numerous sexual overtures” to her.
He threatened the victim with eviction and reporting her drug use to authorities, whenever he became angry with her, then “regularly evicted the victim from her motel room,” including locking her out of her room some nights with no warning.
Tiwari reportedly made the victim perform sexual acts on him as a condition of staying at the motel. When she refused, he would kick her off the property, making her homeless.
“Prosecuting human traffickers and rescuing human trafficking victims is a top priority of this office and the Department of Homeland Security,” Acting Special Agent in Charge Travis Pickard of the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Atlanta Field Office said. “This guilty plea highlights that commitment and serves as a warning to other predators that law enforcement is determined to find, arrest and punish those involved in this heinous crime.”
Following his guilty plea, Tiwari will be back in court on Sept. 6 for sentencing, where he’ll face a maximum of 20 years in prison, plus a $250,000 fine.
Officials said that as part of his plea agreement, he’ll also be paying more than $40,000 as restitution to the victims of his offenses.
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