WASHINGTON D.C.
A federal jury found Willis Lewis, 48, and Brittany Jones, 32, guilty of federal charges, including sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion, sex trafficking of minors, and related offenses, authorities stated.
The pair were guilty of trafficking of a 15-year-old girl and a 17-year-old girl between April and May of 2019.
The verdict was returned Monday, officials stated.
Lewis, of Oxon Hill, Maryland, and Jones, of Suitland, Maryland, remain in custody. The Honorable Royce C. Lamberth scheduled sentencing for Sept. 2.
According to the government’s evidence, Jones, working with two co-conspirators who since pleaded guilty, brought the two victims to Lewis for the purposes of trafficking them.
After they were in Lewis’s custody, Lewis, along with another co-conspirator, set up “dates” for the two girls each day for almost two weeks and Lewis pocketed the money that the two girls made from these dates.
Lewis used a loyalty contract, a firearm, and acts of violence committed against the co-conspirator in front of the victims to coerce the victims into performing commercial sex for his profit, the evidence indicated.
Law enforcement became involved in this investigation after the two victims ran away from a residential facility in Virginia and the facility filed a missing person’s report.
At trial, the co-conspirators testified against Lewis and Jones and were corroborated by independent evidence, including material from the digital devices and cell phone location data.
Both defendants were arrested on July 30, 2019.
This case was investigated by the FBI Washington Field Office’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force.
The task force is composed of FBI agents, along with other federal agents and detectives from northern Virginia and the District of Columbia, including the Metropolitan Police Department.
The task force is charged with investigating and bringing federal charges against individuals engaged in the exploitation of children and those engaged in human trafficking.