Miami Beach charter yacht operator accused of trafficking teen girl to his friends
Police on Wednesday arrested a Miami Beach charter yacht business owner on accusations that he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and also made her engage in prostitution for his financial gain.
Kutay Satiroglu, 45, was booked into Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center without bond on human trafficking and lewd and lascivious battery of a minor charges, and a bond of $1,000 on one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
The girl’s mother contacted police earlier this week after her oldest daughter called and said the teen was being held against her will by Satiroglu, per his arrest report.
When officers went to Satiroglu’s house Wednesday night around 8:30 p.m., he told them the girl was drunk and he had called her mother to pick her up, the report states.
The girl spoke with officers alone and told them she was in “a boyfriend/girlfriend” relationship with Satiroglu that began in April, when they met at a nightclub, police say. The girl informed police she initially told Satiroglu that she was 21. But by the end of the night, she told him the truth, according to the report.
Satiroglu then offered her a job as a steward aboard one of the yachts that he operates, the report states.
The girl told officers that she and Satiroglu got into a physical altercation earlier in the week on his yacht, and that there were two other women on the vessel who are sex workers that he employs for his charters, the arrest report states.
At this point in the interview, the officers called in the department’s human trafficking detectives. The girl told detectives that she initially moved in with Satiroglu at his apartment at 900 Bay Drive, but a few months later, they moved to his yacht docked at Pine Tree Drive, according to the report.
The girl told detectives that she would have sex with Satiroglu’s friends for money — between $200 and $800 — and the couple would use the cash “to fund their household.” Satiroglu also taught her how to collect money in advance and provided her drugs during parties that they would throw, according to the report.
The teen also detailed to detectives that Satiroglu had been physically abusive at times, and would force her to call her friends to come over and have sex with him, the report states. If she refused, he would beat her, she told detectives, per the report.
The detectives said in their report Satiroglu declined to speak to them without an attorney. According to court records, he is being represented by an attorney for the Miami-Dade Public Defenders Office, who did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment.
