New Jersey Man Sentenced To 10 Years For Child Sex Trafficking
A federal judge in Wilmington, Delaware has sentenced a New Jersey man to 10 years in prison in a child sex trafficking case, San Francisco Gate reports.
Yusef Reynolds of Mays Landing was sentenced Tuesday after pleading guilty to child sex trafficking and unlawful possession of a firearm.
According to court records, 21-year-old Reynolds met a 15-year-old girl on Facebook in late 2011. The girl ran away from home on January 17 and began working as a prostitute for Reynolds. He later drove the girl and a 20-year-old who was also working for him as a prostitute to a hotel in Newark, Delaware. He videotaped himself having sex with both girls and posted the images to online advertisements for prostitution.
FBI agents traced a phone number in the ads to the hotel and found Reynolds and the girls there.
When he gets out of prison, Reynolds will be under supervised release and must register as a sex offender.
The Division of Criminal Justice shows 179 cases of sex and labor trafficking in New Jersey in the past seven years, a gross underestimate by experts who put that number in the thousands.
The US State Department estimates that nationally 50,000 men, women, and children are trafficked into the United States annually. That number is on top of 100,000 victims already in the country.
Eight people were recently charged in a sex-trafficking ring based out of Jersey City. The ringleader was accused of tricking women as young as 17 into prostitution with the promise of money, trips to Manhattan, and “the good life.” The ring was dubbed “Operation Red Light” by investigators, and had been in operation for almost 20 years.
