The FBI is asking residents of Northwest Indiana to provide confidential information in its investigation of sex trafficking conspiracy involving 16 minor and young-adult females.
Four Lake County residents and an Illinois resident have been charged in connection with that investigation in a 21-count superseding indictment, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana said in a statement released on Tuesday.
Justin Cephus, 31, Stanton Cephus, 28, and Jovan Stewart, 30, all of Hammond, Haneef Jackson-Bey, 20, of East Chicago, and Delbert Patterson, 19, of Steger, Ill., have been charged with conspiring to commit and committing sex trafficking and prostitution violations.
Justin and Stanton Cephus and Stewart were initially charged in a three-count indictment in March and were ordered detained pending trial “based on the danger they pose to the community and the likelihood that they would flee prior to trail,” the statement said.
The superseding indictment charges all five with participating in the conspiracy and committing one or more offenses involving the sex trafficking of minors, the transportation of minors across state lines for the purpose of prostitution, the sex trafficking of adult women through the use of force, fraud, or coercion, and the transportation of minor and adult women form Indiana to Illinois and from Illinois to Indiana for the purposes of prostitution, the statement said.
“From approximately February 2006 until January 2009, the defendants, led by Justin Cephus, who is charged in each of the 21 counts, ran a prostitution business out of his home and various other locations in and around Hammond,” the statement said. “The business, which advertised in the Yellow Pages in Illinois and Indiana under the names ‘Beauty Escorts,’ ‘Beautiful Entertainment,’ and ‘The Finest and the Best,’ provided sexual services to callers from Northwest Indiana and the Chicago, Ill., area.”
“Defendants used a variety of tactics to recruit girls and keep them working for the business, according to the indictment, including handing out business cards to pretty girls at retail outlets and telling them that the business involved ‘promotions,’ ‘modeling,’ ‘house cleaning,’ ‘private dancing,’ or ‘massage therapy,’” the statement said.
“Defendants are also alleged to have disclosed to girls that a popular music artist is the brother of defendant Patterson and that if they worked for the co-conspirators, they might get to meet the artist and possibly appear in his music videos,” the statement said. “The indictment lays out other methods used to keep girls going on calls, including the use of various forms of physical force, various kinds of fraud, and coercion.”
The investigation of this case is ongoing, the statement said, and is being led by the Chicago Division of the FBI, South Resident Agency. Also instrumental in the investigation have been the Cook County, Ill., Sheriff’s Police and the Hammond Police Department.
Citizens with information about this investigation are urged to contact the FBI at (312) 421-6700. All calls will be treated confidentially.
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