Federal authorities have accused a man from Georgia of using Craigslist to pimp for an underage girl from a Virginia hotel.
Eric Claiborne was charged with transporting a minor across state lines to engage in prostitution. Officials were led to Claiborne by a 17-year-old girl who was dropped off at a Marriott Hotel just two blocks from the White House, charging documents filed Friday in Alexandria’s federal court said. At the hotel, the girl met with an undercover District detective who had solicited her by responding to a Craigslist advertisement.
The girl turned 17 just days before her May meeting with police, court documents said. No attorney is listed for Claiborne in court records.
FBI officials could not immediately say in what section of Craigslist the advertisement was placed. Craigslist recently shut down its “ Erotic Services” section after a Boston medical student was accused of using it to arrange a meeting with a prostitute he allegedly killed. But last week, a North Carolina husband was accused of using the Web site to find a man to rape his wife in front of him.
In this latest case, the District’s Prostitution Enforcement Unit was searching Craigslist advertisements and directing the girls who responded to a room at the JW Marriott, FBI agent Gregory Ryman wrote in a sworn statement.
On May 20, the 17-year-old girl, referred to as “B.T.” in court documents, was dropped off at the hotel by a Lincoln Town Car. Inside, B.T. told a detective she had a pimp whom she knew only as “California E.,” later identified as Claiborne, Ryman wrote. The teen said she met the pimp through Craigslist and had been working for him since May 1. She said she told him her real age and he had her staying in a Virginia hotel.
But when FBI agents went to the Suburban Extended Stay Hotel in Sterling, Va., they got a different story from B.T.’s roommate “Toni W.,” documents said.
Toni reportedly said she introduced B.T. to “a pimp named Claiborne,” Ryman wrote. She and B.T. met in early May while selling themselves on “the Washington D.C. prostitution track around the corner of 14th Street and K Street,” he wrote.
The driver of the Lincoln that dropped B.T. off at the Marriott later identified Claiborne in a lineup as the man who enlisted his driving services.
