WI Man Recruited Ex-Abercrombie & Fitch CEO's Prostitution Ring: Feds

NEW YORK — A Wisconsin man has been charged alongside Abercrombie & Fitch’s former CEO Michael Jeffries and his life partner Matthew Smith on 16 counts of sex trafficking and interstate prostitution charges in Brooklyn federal court, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said on Tuesday at a press conference.

According to Peace, Jeffries, 80, and Smith, 61, are accused of running a sex trafficking operation between December 2008 and March 2015 and are accused of employing a Wisconsin man named James Jacobson to recruit young men to be flown to New York and to hotels around the world to engage in commercial sex with Jeffries and Smith.

Jacobson, 71, is from Rice Lake, Wisconsin.

The indictment comes after several public accusations that Jeffries and Smith had sexually abused and trafficked young men aspiring to be Abercrombie models in the United States and abroad, Peace said. Jeffries was the Abercrombie CEO from 1992-2014.

"The message from today's prosecution is clear: Sexually exploiting vulnerable human beings is a crime, and doing so by dangling dreams of a future in fashion or modeling or any other business is no different," Peace said.

Jeffries, Smith, and Jacobson are also accused of using force, fraud and coercion to get the victims to engage in sexual acts, Peace said.

Peace said the three defendants are accused of pressuring the victims to drink alcohol and consume muscle relaxers and Viagra while leading the victims to believe that attending these sex events could yield modeling opportunities with Abercrombie or otherwise benefit their careers.

According to Peace, the defendants are also accused of violating victims who did not or could not consent, in some cases injecting them with an erection-inducing drug.

Peace also said that the men are accused of hiring staff that would ensure the victims would sign non-disclosure agreements and hand over their phones and personal belongings before the events started and spending millions of dollars on the infrastructure of the operation.

Though 15 victims have been found in the investigation so far, Peace said he expects several more to emerge now that the indictment has been announced.

Jeffries and Smith made their initial appearances Tuesday afternoon in federal court in the Southern District of Florida, and Jacobson made his initial appearance this afternoon in federal court in St. Paul, Minnesota.

If convicted of sex trafficking, the three defendants face a 15-year minimum prison sentence, and if convicted of interstate prostitution charges, the defendants face a 20-year maximum prison sentence.

Lisa Finn and Miranda Levingston, Patch Staff, contributed to this report