Mike Jeffries, former chief executive of the US clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch, has been arrested for alleged sex trafficking and interstate prostitution following weeks of speculation over allegations of professional misconduct.
Law enforcement officials announced the arrest of Jeffries in a press conference Tuesday, alleging the fashion executive oversaw a years-long enterprise that lured and exploited young men looking for a break in the fashion world.
Jeffries’ romantic partner, Matthew Smith, and associate James Jacobsen were also arrested for their alleged role in the enterprise.
The three men are due in United States federal court in Florida and Wisconsin on Tuesday, after which they will be indicted in the eastern district of New York.
US Attorney Breon Peace, announcing the charges at a press conference in New York, said the case should “serve as a warning … to anyone who thinks they can exploit and coerce others by using the so-called ‘casting couch’ system”.
“Powerful individuals for too long have trafficked and abused for their own sexual pleasure young people with few resources,” said Peace.
The Jeffries case comes only two weeks after another powerful man, Sean “Diddy” Combs, was accused in New York of trafficking and sexually abusing women for years.
What are the charges?
According to an unsealed indictment, Jeffries and his associates paid for dozens of men to travel around the world to engage in commercial sex with them and other men from 2008 to 2015.
It describes sexual bacchanals – spanning from New York to Morocco – in which the recruited men were given drugs, lubricant, condoms, costumes, sex toys and, sometimes, erection-inducing penile injections that caused painful, hours-long reactions.
The defendants led the men to believe that attending the events would help their careers, including their chances of getting Abercrombie modeling gigs — or that not complying could harm their prospects, the indictment says.
Jeffries and Smith employed Jacobson to recruit and hire the men, who typically had to undergo “tryouts” by having sex with Jacobson first, according to the indictment. It says other, unnamed household staffers also helped facilitate the events, including by acting as security and providing alcohol, muscle relaxants, Viagra and other items.
“On more than one occasion, when men did not or could not consent, Jeffries and Smith violated the bodily integrity of these men by subjecting them or continuing to subject them to invasive sexual and violent contact,” said Peace.
They “did not just carry this activity on a couple of occasions. Their sex trafficking and prostitution enterprise lasted at least from the end of 2008 until early 2015”, Peace added.
Jeffries’s attorney, Brian Bieber, told the Associated Press via email that he would “respond in detail to the allegations after the indictment is unsealed, and when appropriate, but plan to do so in the courthouse — not the media.”
The charges follow a series of sexual misconduct allegations from young people who said Jeffries promised modeling work and then pressed them into sex acts.
Abercrombie & Fitch previously said it is “appalled and disgusted” by the allegations about Jeffries’s behaviour and has “zero tolerance for abuse, harassment or discrimination of any kind”.
Jeffries left the company in 2014 with a golden parachute compensation package worth $25m, according to corporate filings.
