A northwest Georgia man is the latest to plead guilty to a series of sex trafficking crimes involving minors over a year-long period, prosecutors said Friday.
Brian Hernandez Acosta, 29, of Dalton, pleaded guilty on July 1 to multiple charges, including conducting a child exploitation enterprise, conspiring to engage and engaging in sex trafficking minors by force, fraud or coercion, sex trafficking of children under 18 years old, interstate transport of a minor for prostitution, producing child pornography, and distributing cocaine to a person under 21 years old.
From November 2015 to December to 2016, Hernandez Acosta and five other people caused at least six girls between the ages of 16 and 17 to engage in prostitution through the use of force, fraud and coercion, prosecutors said.
“The defendant produced child pornography and pursued a full range of child exploitation methods,” U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak said in a news release. “The scheme in this case is especially egregious because they coerced their child victims into engaging in sexual activity in some instances through the use of alcohol and cocaine. We are hopeful that Hernandez Acosta’s guilty plea will encourage more victims to contact law enforcement.”
Hernandez Acosta took provocative photographs of some of the girls from Snapchat and Facebook and posted them in the adult entertainment and escort sections of Backpage.com, prosecutors said. Hernandez Acosta created ads on the site to solicit men to engage in sex with the minors for money, according to officials. The advertisements used fake names for the girls and falsely listed their ages as between 19 and 21 years old.
In one incident, Hernandez Acosta forced one 16-year-old girl to have sex with men after offering her a place to live and driving her from Florida to Georgia, prosecutors said. He required the young girls to have sex with multiple men each night and kept a large portion of the money they earned, officials said in the news release.
As the lead defendant in this case, Hernandez Acosta was the third to plead guilty. Nilageo Alvarez Acosta pleaded guilty on April 11 to conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, sex trafficking children under 18 years old, and interstate transport of a minor for prostitution. Jaime Adam Riano pleaded guilty Nov. 17, 2017, to sex trafficking children under 18 years old.
Anthony Joseph Lawhon and Brandi Rice Stumpe, who allegedly held sex parties at their home in Canton and engaged in sex acts with minor girls or young women while supplying them with alcohol and cocaine, have also been charged. Their trial is scheduled for Sept. 16 before U.S. District Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr.
“This defendant and his friends preyed upon vulnerable teens, and in a scheme of cruelty and brutality coerced his victims to sell their bodies for his own gratification and profit,” Chris Hacker, special agent in charge of FBI Atlanta, said in the news release. “The FBI has zero tolerance for the sex trafficking of children and will continue to work with law enforcement partners to ensure justice is served for the victims.”
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