Defendant Lured Foreign Students on False Promises.in Furtherance of Interstate Prostitution and Erotic Massage
Enterprise
Chief United States District Court Judge K. Michael Moore of
the Southern District of Florida sentenced Jeffrey Jason Cooper, 47, of Miami
Beach, Florida, to 30 years in prison for sex trafficking and related
violations arising from the defendant’s scheme to recruit foreign students on
false promises of legitimate summer jobs, and then to advertise them to
customers of his prostitution and erotic massage enterprise. Chief Judge Moore
also ordered Cooper to pay $8,640.00 in restitution to the victims.
A jury convicted Cooper on Nov. 17, 2016, of five counts of
sex trafficking and attempted sex trafficking by fraud, three counts of wire
fraud, two counts of importing and attempting to import aliens for prostitution
or immoral purposes, and one count of using a facility of interstate commerce
to operate a prostitution enterprise. According to evidence presented during
the four-day trial, Cooper recruited foreign university students from
Kazakhstan through the Department of State’s Summer Work Travel Program,
falsely promising them clerical jobs at his fictitious yoga studio. In addition
to defrauding the students, Cooper fraudulently induced an educational exchange
agency to sponsor the victims’ visas, and caused government officials to issue
the victims temporary, non-immigrant “J-1” visas based on Cooper’s false and
fraudulent offer of legitimate summer jobs.
After the victims arrived in Miami, Cooper revealed to them
for the first time that the yoga studio did not exist and that he expected them
to perform erotic massages for customers of his erotic massage and prostitution
enterprise. Witnesses testified that the victims, shocked and upset, tried to
find work elsewhere but eventually gave up and began working for the defendant.
As established at trial, police began investigating Cooper
after neighbors complained he was prostituting women from his apartment
complex, and conducted an undercover operation that led to the recovery of the
victims, one day before Cooper had scheduled them to travel to Los Angeles,
California, where Cooper also operated his prostitution and erotic massage
enterprise. When questioned by law enforcement, Cooper claimed that the victims
cleaned apartments for him, and characterized his relationship with them as
that of an “older brother.”
Evidence at trial included records from Backpage.com
advertising the victims’ services, and Facebook communications confirming that
Cooper recruited the victims on false and fraudulent pretenses, revealing the
true nature of his erotic massage and prostitution enterprise only after the
victims arrived in the United States.
“Cooper brazenly manipulated and deceived vulnerable young
students so he could profit by selling them for sex, with no regard for their
fundamental human dignity,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Tom Wheeler
of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The Civil Rights Division
and its partners on the Anti-Trafficking Coordination Team (ACTeam) Initiative
will continue to vigorously pursue traffickers who operate internationally in
order to bring them to justice and vindicate the rights of vulnerable victims.”
“The successful prosecution and decades-long sentence
imposed on Jeffrey Cooper illustrate the international impact of law
enforcement’s united efforts to combat human trafficking – whether by fraud,
force or otherwise,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Benjamin G. Greenberg. “The U.S.
Attorney’s Office will continue to bring to justice those individuals who
knowingly exploit others for their own personal profit.”
“We are committed to working with our law enforcement
partners to prevent situations where vulnerable individuals are exploited in
human trafficking schemes such as this,” said Christian Schurman, acting
director of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS). “Because
of our global presence, DSS is positioned to work with U.S. and foreign law
enforcement to stop those that would manipulate instruments of international
travel to profit from selling human beings in this way.”
The case was investigated by HSI and DSS, with assistance
from the Prosecutor General’s Office in Kazakhstan; the FBI Legal Attaché
Office in Astana, Kazakhstan; the Justice Department’s Office of International
Affairs, the Miami Dade Police Department and the North Bay Village, Florida,
Police Department. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth M.
Schlessinger, who was previously with the Southern District of Florida and is
now with the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and Trial Attorney Matthew T.
Grady of the Civil Rights Division’s Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit.
The Southern District of Florida was selected as one of six
Phase I Anti-Trafficking Coordination Teams (ACTeams) through the interagency
ACTeam Initiative of the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Labor.
Designated ACTeams focus on developing high-impact human trafficking
investigations and prosecutions involving forced labor, international sex
trafficking, and sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion through
interagency collaboration among federal prosecutors and federal investigative
agencies.
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