Interstate Sex Trafficker Sentenced to 15 Years in Federal Prison for Prostituting Adult and Minor Victims

CHICAGO—An Oregon man who engaged in interstate sex trafficking of two adult women and a teenage girl from the West Coast to the Midwest was sentenced today to 15 years in federal prison. The defendant, Erik Shamsud-din, 46, was sentenced after a hearing at which the minor victim, now 23, testified in U.S. District Court.

Shamsud-din, who pleaded guilty in May to interstate prostitution, was sentenced to 180 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, by U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve. He must serve at least 85 percent of his federal sentence before he is eligible for release and there is no parole in the federal prison system. The sentence resolved federal charges against Shamsud-din in Oregon and northern Illinois. Shamsud-din previously served a 112-month sentence after a 1991 conviction for rape and prostituting two teenage girls.

Shamsud-din “was a predator who targeted vulnerable women, including a minor, sent them out to have sex with strangers, and took all the money they made for himself,” the government argued in seeking the 20-year sentence.

According to court records, in late 2006, Shamsud-din was engaged in prostituting two adult women in California when he met Victim A, a 16-year-old homeless runaway, and he began prostituting her as well. Shamsud-din and his victims left California and traveled to Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, where he engaged in prostituting them, before traveling in late January 2007 from Texas to Illinois to further engage in prostitution. On January 27, 2007, Skokie Police responded to a fight between the minor and an adult victim. The minor was rescued, and Shamsud-din was arrested, which later resulted in the federal charges in Chicago.

The investigation was conducted by the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation after Shamsud-din was arrested in 2007 by the Skokie Police Department. The sentence was announced by Gary S. Shapiro, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Cory B. Nelson, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago Office of the FBI.

The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Margaret Schneider and Heather McShain.