Three charged in human trafficking crackdown
By: Scott McCabe
Examiner Staff Writer
March 3, 2010
Montgomery County police have made human trafficking arrests in three cases in which they said pimps used Facebook or Craigslist to recruit teenage girls and solicit business.
One suspect ran a web design business in New York. A Maryland man had an Internet escort service that authorities say was a front for prostitution and human trafficking, and a D.C. man was charged with trying to recruit a 16-year-old girl he met on a social networking site
"The Internet has become the modern day track," said Sgt. Ken Penrod, referring to the street corners where men traditionally cruise looking for prostitutes. "We just want people to know that it is occurring, that they're using sites like MySpace to recruit your child."
Police said Rodney Hubert, 34, hired a group of women that would recruit girls for modeling shoots. They promised a 15-year-old that they needed her for a photo shoot in the District. Instead, the women holed up in a Montgomery County hotel, snatched the girl's phone and money, posted her photo on Craigslist and forced her into prostitution. 
Police were tipped off when a hotel worker noticed the parade of men going into the room, Penrod said.
Hubert and the women were charged last month with human trafficking, sexual abuse of a minor and second-degree child abuse.
On Friday, police charged 31-year-old Arash Koraganie Abbas, of Germantown, with several counts of human trafficking. Penrod said Abbas hired20 prostitutes and made more than $10,000 a week. When the girls tried to get out of the business, Abbas threatened to send illicit photos to their families.
Two days earlier, they arrested Deangelo A. Bynum, 24, of Northeast Washington on a charge of solicitation of a minor for prostitut
ion. Police said he met a girl on Facebook and tried to recruit her through multiple telephone calls, e-mail and text messages.
In all three cases, the suspects left trails of electronic evidence including e-mails and text messages.
"Someone asked me, 'Doesn't the Internet make your job harder?' " Penrod said. "The Internet makes it easier. Sometimes, we never have to leave our desks to develop probable cause."
