The Manhattan District Attorney’s office wants to seize more than $111,000 from a sicko building super who repeatedly raped a maid — including $11,000 in cash he kept in a piggy bank in his Flatiron apartment.
Jose Espinoza was convicted in December of rape, labor trafficking and other charges and sentenced to 22 years in state prison for the years-long scheme.
Espinoza, 62, met the illegal migrant from Paraguay in August 2017 and hired her to clean apartments in the West 16th Street building where he worked as a super, in exchange for sex.
But when she wanted to end the arrangement a year later, Espinoza beat her, took her passport, tracked her and stole her earnings, authorities said.
He forced the maid to open a joint bank account and between 2020 and 2024, when he was arrested, kept more than $100,000 of her earnings “and used [it] for his benefit and that of his family members,” the DA’s office said in Manhattan Supreme Court papers seeking the money.
Espinoza stuffed cash the victim earned into a piggy bank he kept in a rear bedroom of his apartment, and “kept a ring camera on the piggy bank so he could … ensure his control over it,” prosecutors said in court papers.
The super, who once blackmailed the middle-aged maid into silence by demanding naked pictures of her special needs child and then threatening to share them, also forced her to have sex with him in front of her kid.
The torment ended in 2022 when the victim was undergoing treatment for breast cancer and told a social worker of her ordeal.
Attorney Joseph Caldarera, who reps Espinoza and declined comment on the forfeiture, said he plans to appeal his client’s conviction.
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