Sex Trafficking Online Dating

Sex Trafficking Online Dating

Promises of illegal jobs are a common ploy

Sex traffickers are often willing to pay for their victim to come visit them

Usually occurs when victim is travelling overseas

Help is available, even for illegal immigrants

As part of our efforts to educate you about online dating safety we would like to discuss sex trafficking. While we have never personally heard of a sex trafficking case on any of our websites, we still think you should be aware of all the facts to stay safe online.
Sex trafficking is a type of human trafficking. Human trafficking is the trading of men, women and children for the purpose of servitude and forced labor. It is one of the fastest growing criminal industries in the world. In sex trafficking, women (usually) are traded within and between countries for sex work. The women are usually deceived and lured into prostitution with a promise of a job or some other opportunity that sounds to good to be true.
Spotting a sex trafficker while you’re trying to find a special someone can be a hard ask but here are some signs to look out for:
As horrifying as sex trafficking is, there are some myths surrounding it too.
For more information, please visit the US Citizenship and Immigration Services website.
Here are some quick tips to stay safe online:
Not sure how to prepare for your trip overseas? Click here for more information.
For tips on ensuring your emotional safety, click here .
Don’t know what to look out for when chatting with someone online? These tips might help.
The Human Trafficking website is an excellent source of information about trafficking across the world.
The United States Department of Justice runs the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website (NSOPW) which is a database of all convicted sex offenders in USA as well as Puerto Rico. In addition, if you would like more information on a particular jurisdiction or state, click here .

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In order to better understand patterns related to human trafficking online, this section offers a review of a set of U.S. federal cases involving human trafficking via online channels, beginning with an overview of some of the applicable domestic laws related to trafficking. The following is only a sampling of U.S laws relevant to this complex issue.
At the federal level, numerous domestic laws might be applied to human trafficking cases. Sex trafficking was criminalized by 18 U.S.C. §1591, which makes it illegal to recruit, entice, provide, harbor, maintain, or transport a person or to benefit from involvement in causing the person to engage in a commercial sex act, knowing that force, fraud, or coercion was used or that the person was under the age of 18. Sex traffickers also may face charges under other federal statutes applicable to sex trafficking, such as 18 U.S.C. § 2423(a), prohibiting transportation of a minor with intent that the individual engage in criminal sexual activity. On the labor trafficking side, 18 U.S.C. §§1589-1590 make it illegal to knowingly provide or obtain the labor of a person by certain means, such as force or threats of force, or to traffic a person for labor or services by means of force, coercion, or fraud for the purpose of subjecting the person to slavery, involuntary servitude, debt bondage, or peonage.
Federal laws addressing human trafficking apply across the country; state laws addressing trafficking also exist, but vary in terms of definitions, penalties, and enforcement priorities. While most states have recognized and criminalized sex trafficking, 1 many have only recently done so, and with significant variations in penalties imposed on perpetrators. According to the State Department’s 2011 TIP Report , “While state prosecutions continue to increase, one study found that less than 10% of state and local law enforcement agencies surveyed had protocols or policies on human trafficking.” 2
The above laws address the criminalization of a trafficker’s conduct, but a trafficked victim can potentially face criminal charges, depending on whether the applicable law offers the victim protection. For example, under federal law, a 16-year-old engaged in commercial sex acts is a trafficking victim, regardless of whether the minor appears to have participated willingly in said acts, because the law presumes that an underage victim cannot provide legal consent. However, the protections available to trafficking victims vary between states, and minor victims of sex trafficking can face prostitution charges in some state courts. 3
In April 2010, New York became the first state to pass legislation addressing this issue, with the Safe Harbor for Exploited Children Act. 4 The act prohibits the prosecution of minors for prostitution. Several states would subsequently pass similar legislation. 5
Fiscal year 2010 saw the greatest number of U.S. federal human trafficking prosecutions initiated in a single year. According to the 2011 TIP Report , “Collectively federal law enforcement charged 181 individuals, and obtained 141 convictions in 103 human trafficking prosecutions (32 labor trafficking and 71 sex trafficking).” 6 The average prison sentence was 11.8 years, with prison terms ranging from 3 months to 54 years. 7 The Internet and online tools played roles in a number of these cases.
A scan of recent legal cases involving human trafficking and online technologies provides insights regarding details about the uses of technology by traffickers. 8 The primary sources for details of trafficking investigations were press releases from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice, and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. A search of press releases from these organizations using a combination of terms including “sex trafficking,” “forced labor,” “labor trafficking,” “human trafficking,” “minor,” “prostitution,” “online,” “advertisement,” and “Internet” produced a set of cases that were manually reviewed for relevance, with results limited to cases involving either a guilty plea or a conviction. The search did not produce any cases involving labor trafficking and online technologies; all of the results reviewed were related to sex trafficking. The following is based on a self-selected sample of 27 federal trafficking cases since 2009 involving the use of social networking sites or online classified advertisements to facilitate trafficking. A search of legal databases, using keywords including “sex trafficking,” “labor trafficking,” “human trafficking,” “minor,” “website,” “online,” and “Internet”—as well as searches for convictions under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1590-1591 9 —produced examples illustrating the use of the Internet to facilitate trafficking.
The cases collected do not indicate the totality of trafficking cases involving social networking sites and online classifieds but rather serve to demonstrate some of the ways in which technology is used to facilitate trafficking and the patterns that begin to emerge across cases.
In the course of this study, researchers did not discover evidence of traffickers utilizing the Internet to facilitate labor trafficking, perhaps due to the circumstances typically surrounding this form of trafficking. Research suggests that victims often are recruited from impoverished regions and typically learn about opportunities via word of mouth. Once recruited, workers may be isolated, without access to technology. “Most of the victims we’re seeing are from underdeveloped countries,” said Anna Park, regional attorney for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Los Angeles District Office. “In the cases we’ve had,” she noted, the use of technology “is very unlikely.” 10
Employment discrimination laws have become instrumental in the fight against labor trafficking. 11 Park was involved in a case brought by the Los Angeles District Office of the EEOC against Trans Bay Steel, 12 in which the EEOC filed a class national-origin discrimination action on behalf of a group of Thai welders who were trafficked and forced into labor. Initially recruited by an agency to work as high-skilled welders and provided with legitimate visas, the workers were subsequently “held against their will, had their passports confiscated, had their movements restricted, and were forced to work without pay all in violation of Title VII. Additionally, some workers were confined to cramped apartments without any electricity, water, or gas.” 13
What we have seen are temporary contracting agencies bringing in workers through legitimate means under the auspices of luring people with the promise of work so that they can lead a better life. However, the victims are charged exorbitant fees that the workers can never pay because, oftentimes, they are never paid for their work. This fee is used to subjugate and exploit the workers, forcing them to tolerate and endure intolerable situations. 14
According to Park, most of the targeted communities are agrarian, and people typically learn about job opportunities from neighbors and members of their communities. Newspapers in languages targeting a monolithic group (e.g., Thai newspapers) also may advertise positions that turn out to be labor trafficking, particularly in light of the fact that many of the employment agencies involved in trafficking are otherwise legitimate and likely advertise. In the event that these community newspapers move online, there may be an opportunity to evaluate how online classifieds may be used for labor trafficking.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta offered a similar assessment of technology in the context of labor trafficking, noting that labor traffickers do not use much technology and that such uses tend to be limited to pay-as-you-go cellphones. 15 However, as rural communities gain access to the Internet, there will be a need to study the benefits of online technologies as well as their potential use as tools of manipulation, depicting a false reality designed to lure persons away from their homes and into forced labor. 16
The lack of examples of online communication with respect to labor trafficking might also stem from the nature of the messages communicated by traffickers—namely employment opportunities and promises of fair wages. Unlike sex traffickers, who advertise using language that signals the nature of the available services (e.g., using terms such as “young”), labor traffickers rely on deceit, making compelling false promises. The challenge is to decipher which job advertisements will result in labor trafficking once the laborer responds to the advertisement and arrives for work. Unless the recruiters, employers, or other details of their advertisements have already been identified for trafficking abuses, it is immensely difficult to design studies wherein observing online communications alone will reveal disingenuous intentions. The unique features of the labor trafficking system make it particularly challenging to track through Internet tools and technologies at this time.
Although easier to track than labor trafficking, determining instances of sex trafficking online poses its own complications. In particular, distinctions between advertisements of trafficking victims as opposed to sex workers who do not fall within the legal definitions of trafficking can be limited and blurred. Focusing on some of the most vulnerable victims of trafficking, this report directs its research and technological solutions toward detecting minors advertised for commercial sexual services. Under the TVPA, all minors engaged in commercial sex acts are treated as victims of trafficking. 17 Although advertisements frequently misrepresent the age of victims, certain keywords meant to serve as signals for the purchasers who drive the demand for sex with minors make detection a possibility. Although the signals and terms change frequently, the nature of advertising a minor’s sexual services to purchasers with particular age and characteristic preferences makes it possible to detect common themes across online classified ads.
Focusing on the set of cases in which the Internet is used by sex traffickers, certain patterns begin to emerge: (1) Online classified sites are used to post advertisements of victims, (2) social networking sites are used in the recruitment of victims, (3) investigations may begin with a picture of what appears to be an underage girl in an online classified ad, and (4) a number of victims have been identified as runaways.
The Internet was used to advertise the sexual services of victims in all of the cases reviewed. For example, Byron Thompson, who pled guilty to sex trafficking in Maryland in July 2009, created Craigslist and Backpage postings advertising the sexual services of his victims, who were featured in photographs in the ads. 18 In January 2011, Clint Wilson pled guilty to sex trafficking in a Texas federal court. Wilson posted ads on Backpage, offering commercial sex services by his minor victim, who was featured in the ads. 19 A Florida federal jury found Tyrone Townsend guilty of sex trafficking in February 2011. Among the evidence collected by investigators were 28 Internet ads and a Garmin GPS seized from Townsend’s vehicle. Using the GPS, investigators were able to establish locations of several customers in the Jacksonville area. 20
In a case filed in the Southern District of New York, United States v. Daniel Marino, et al., 14 members and associates of the Gambino organized crime family pled guilty to various federal charges, including sex trafficking and sex trafficking of a minor. 21 Several of the defendants operated a prostitution business, through which they exploited young women and girls for commercial sex. The business was advertised on Craigslist and other websites. 22
While Craigslist was the most frequently referenced website in the cases reviewed, the “Adult Services” section of the site has since closed. “The source now is Backpage,” noted the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta, “aside from underground and quasi-underground chat rooms.” 23
Describing the challenges of reviewing online classified ads in search of trafficking activity, the office added: “It’s not easy to quantify or to identify someone who is using code words. You would have to weed through, in theory, a hundred ads before you get the one.” 24 The task of manually sorting through myriad advertisements is a strain on often-limited law-enforcement resources. Without some technological solutions to narrow the pool of potential advertisements, the task of manually reviewing these ads exceeds the limits of what investigators can reasonably expect to achieve.
Beyond advertising sexual services, traffickers also use the Internet to interact with potential victims. In four of the cases reviewed, traffickers used social media as a recruiting tool. In June 2010, Dwayne Lawson was sentenced to 210 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to sex trafficking of children. The investigation began when Los Angeles police arrested a teenage girl for prostitution. Investigators learned that the girl was a runaway working for Lawson, who initially “contacted the girl in the fall of 2008 on Myspace.com and, after promising to make her a ‘star,’ gave her a bus ticket from Florida to Las Vegas, Nevada.” 25
A common starting point for investigators is the appearance of the victim in photos used by sex traffickers to advertise. According to public records, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta said, agents frequently review pictures in online classified ads, noting when a girl seems younger than her advertised age. Agents may then undertake investigations based on a picture that appears to feature an underage girl.
In August 2010, Lawrence Pruitt and Marvin Harris were sentenced to 10 years and four years, respectively, in federal prison for sex trafficking of a minor. Agents investigating the possible prostitution of underage girls arrested the pair at an Atlanta-area hotel, where investigators found the victim, a 17-year-old “whose photographs the agents had previously seen on an Internet website advertising erotic services. The FBI believed that the victim, whose advertisement listed her age as 19, was a juvenile.” 26
The investigation of Thelonious Reed, sentenced in June 2009 on charges related to sex trafficking, began when an agent discovered an ad for a young woman in the Erotic Services section of Craigslist. The ad, in which a young woman appeared topless, described the woman as 19 years old. Believing her to be younger, the agent set up a meeting posing as a client. Upon arrival, the 18-year-old victim revealed that she was trafficked for sex by Reed, who lured her by describing himself as a modeling agent. 27
However, investigating based upon a photo is not without complications, as in some cases a fake or doctored image may be used to advertise the victim’s services. “That makes it even harder to peel back the layers and get to the trafficked female,” noted the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta. 28
In several of the cases reviewed, investigators discovered the victims were runaways. 29 This finding corresponds to the 2011 U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report, “U.S. citizen child victims [of sex trafficking] are often runaways, troubled, and homeless youth.” 30 In May 2010, Ezekiel Alon Hampton of Tacoma, Washington, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for counts involving sex trafficking. The investigation began when the police department contacted a young runaway about a reported assault and discovered that the 14-year-old girl was being trafficked, along with several other young women. The girl, who had recently left Hampton, explained that he made the girls advertise their sexual services on Craigslist. All of the victims turned out to be runaways, and Hampton provided them with housing, food, and drugs. 31
In October 2010, Sterling Terrance Hospedales, a former Army sergeant, was sentenced to 11 years for sex trafficking and attempted sex trafficking of a child. The investigation began in Lakewood, Washington, when local police received reports of a young runaway posting ads selling sexual services on Craigslist. Investigators located and interviewed the juvenile, who led them to Hospedales. Investigators also discovered another juvenile victimized by Hospedales. The second juvenile had met him on Myspace. Hospedales paid for her plane ticket and, within a week, posted photos of her on Craigslist advertising sexual services. In a memo, prosecutors emphasized that Hospedales had targeted susceptible juveniles, “Hospedales intentionally sought out emotionally damaged, vulnerable victims—runaways who had no support system whatsoever and no idea of how to be in a normal, functioning relationship.” 32
The Human Trafficking Rescue Project conducted a sting operation in March 2009 targeting individuals attempting to engage in sex with prostituted children. 33 Ads were posted on Craigslist describing children available for sex; however, no children were actually involved in the operation. Richard Oflyng, a Kansas truck driver who responded to an ad describing “little girls,” was arrested after making an appointment to have sex with an 11-year-old girl. Oflyng pled guilty and was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for attempted sex trafficking. 34
“This sentence serves as a warning,” said Gilbert Trill, assistant special agent, ICE Office of Investigations, Kansas City. “Some child predators mistakenly believe the anonymity of cyberspace shields them from scrutiny. In fact,
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