3 indicted in Maryland human trafficking case

BALTIMORE - Three people have been indicted by a grand jury on human trafficking charges in Maryland. Officials said the victims were lured in by internet ads for modeling jobs, but were forced into selling themselves for sex.

The operation is said to have started in 2013, but the investigation began in 2015 when Prince George's County police made an arrest. They then started looking into online classified ads of a company calling itself "Pink Pleasure Entertainment." Court documents released on Tuesday claim that the "escort modeling company" was a front for an alleged prostitution operation that used women who had responded to the ad, and then were forced into providing sexual services to clients.

The indictments allege between 2013 and 2015, Rashid Marwin Mosby, Terra Marie Perry and Joshua Isaiah Jones took out hundreds of ads on the internet classified site backpage.com. The ads for Pink Pleasure Entertainment claimed it was a modeling and escort agency, but the court documents said it was much more than that.

It detailed that soon after being recruited to work for the company, the female victims that included two teenagers, a New Jersey woman and a North Carolina juvenile, were trafficked to and from hotels in the Prince George's County, Baltimore and the D.C. region.

The victims were allegedly forced into sexual encounters through coercion, deception intimidation and physical violence. The indictment further said the women were then forced to turn over money from the sexual encounters to the three defendants.

Authorities said Mosby and Perry are in police custody while Jones remains at large.

All three are charged with several charges of conspiracy human trafficking, human trafficking of a minor, human trafficking and receiving earnings of a prostitute.

If convicted, they could face up 50 years behind bars.