Fwd: Sex Trafficking Victim Found Online from 2 Year Old Photo

Thu Jun 7 12:50:13 EDT 2018

Sometimes really good things come out of our work.

Congrats to the Traffic Jam team!

Cheers,
Artur

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Marinus Analytics <info at marinusanalytics.com>
Date: Thu, Jun 7, 2018 at 12:39 PM
Subject: Sex Trafficking Victim Found Online from 2 Year Old Photo
To: <awd at cs.cmu.edu>

It started with an outcry from Allie, who was pimped 2 years ago by a
violent trafficker who went by the name “Julian.”
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Traffic Jam Success Story

“Justice is something for which every generation has to strive.”
― John M. Perkins

*The Outcry*
It started with an outcry from Allie,* who was pimped 2 years ago by a
violent trafficker who went by the name “Julian.”* She told Detective John
Patterson,* “I want to get out of this, because of what Julian’s done to
me. And he did it to a 15 year old girl, too.” Similar cases of this
scope—which grew to 21 identified victims—would take a year; Detective
Patterson built this case in about 3 months.  Detective Patterson credits
the importance of good experience, trainings, and technology tools like
Traffic Jam.

*The Violent Pimp*
Julian was a violent pimp, and he required a $1,500 per day quota for each
victim; he would beat them if they didn’t bring home that money each night.
He had been arrested many times in the past; for aggravated assault with a
motor vehicle, running his victims over with a car several times. For
strangling one of his victims until she passed out. For punching and
assaulting others. But force, fraud, and coercion aren’t always physical;
he also threatened to kill their children if they didn’t work for him.

Julian recruited his victims in person and on social media apps like
Instagram. He broke down one victim by recruiting her to work as a
stripper, and then repeatedly raping her over a number of days. When she
still refused to sell sex for him, he withheld food until she broke down
and agreed. When she tried to escape, he used a location tracking app on
her phone to chase her down. He found her, assaulted her, and put her back
to work. She couldn’t work for a few more days, because customers would
notice her black eye.

*Traffic Jam*
Detective Patterson used Allie’s testimony to begin piecing together the
case. By searching victims’ Facebook photos through Traffic Jam’s
FaceSearch, he was able to find their ads posted across the country, from
the South all the way up to Pennsylvania and back. He said, “I used Traffic
Jam to map out the course that Allie exactly described.”

He was searching for Jessica,* an underage victim Allie had told him about.
He scrolled through Jessica’s Instagram, and found the most recent pictures
she posted of herself, which were over 2 years old, from when she was
fifteen. He said, “I didn’t think it would lead to anything, because it was
such an old photo. But I thought I’d run it through FaceSearch just in
case. I couldn’t believe it when the 2 year old photo returned top matches
in FaceSearch that looked just like her.” He saw in the Traffic Jam trail
that she was currently posting in California, but had posted in his city in
the months before. Through use of FaceSearch and confirmation of the
locations/times in the Traffic Jam trail, Detective Patterson successfully
identified Jessica using a photo that was 2 years old.

Allie told him about another victim, Sammy,* and her Facebook account. He
found some year-old pictures of Sammy on her Facebook profile and uploaded
them into FaceSearch to see if he could find a match. FaceSearch returned
top matches, none of which looked like Sammy. Patterson said, “I thought
the matches weren’t her, they just didn’t look like her.” He sanity-checked
the top matches, by checking the timing and location of the ads. Then, he
said, “I found that one of the phone numbers in the ad was registered to
her name. That made me realize that the pictures from the FaceSearch
results were a correct match, but I didn’t recognize her at first because
she had changed her appearance so drastically.” When the appearance of the
victim looked completely different, FaceSearch was still able to make a
positive match, in seconds.

*Where Are They Now*
By using various technology tools like Traffic Jam, paired with victim
interviews and evidence gathered through search warrants, Detective
Patterson determined the 21 victims Julian had exploited over a number of
years. Patterson assembled a history of money transfers from the victims to
their pimp. He confirmed that many of Julian’s victims were working in
different states (as correlated to their ads) and wiring their earnings
from out of state back to Julian. He determined Julian was making about
$15,000 a month, from 2 girls alone; and he had a total of 21 victims over
the span of the investigation.

The police department received an arrest warrant for Julian for 6 felonies,
which they served him when he came out of the house on trash day.
Detectives intervened right after he had threatened to kill another
victim’s baby if she didn’t keep working for him. This violent trafficker
is currently in jail without bail, awaiting prosecution and potential life
in prison for his crimes, all thanks to the tireless efforts of Detective
Patterson and his team.

* names have been changed to protect individual’s identity
*Contact*

For law enforcement who would like to be in contact with the detective
who submitted this story, please email us <info at marinusanalytics.com> and
we will connect you.

Have a success story other investigators should know about? Share your story
<info at marinusanalytics.com>.
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