Everett Area Resident Sentenced to Six+ Years in Prison for Human Trafficking
Defendant Forced 19-Year-Old Girl into Life of Prostitution
| U.S. Attorney’s Office April 30, 2010 |
MARQUIN THOMPSON, 28, a resident of Everett, Washington and San Diego, California, was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Seattle to 77 months in prison and three years of supervised release for human trafficking. THOMPSON pleaded guilty in January 2010, admitting that he had forced a young woman into prostitution. THOMPSON took the young woman to Arizona and California where he forced her to work as a prostitute. The sentence was imposed by U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour.
According to records filed in the case, between September 2007, and January 2008, THOMPSON forced a young woman to work for him as a prostitute along Pacific Highway South in the Kent and Des Moines, Washington areas. The young woman had become estranged from her family. THOMPSON controlled the young woman with threats and violence. The young woman was expected to make hundreds of dollars each day, and was required to turn over all of her earnings to THOMPSON. In October 2007, THOMPSON took the young woman to Nevada and Arizona, where THOMPSON continued to coerce her, using threats of harm and abandonment, to compel her to work as a prostitute.
The young woman has since been reunited with her family.
In her sentencing memo, Assistant United States Attorney Ye-Ting Woo wrote that other women have been exploited by THOMPSON. “In February 2006, the defendant was convicted of supervision of a prostitute, in Santa Ana, California. In May 2009, the defendant was identified as a suspect, along with two other adult males, by the Phoenix Police Department in the recruitment of a teenage girl to engage in prostitution. In August 2009, the defendant was arrested in San Diego for a probation violation, and was with another young woman who was believed to be involved in prostitution,” Ms. Woo wrote in her sentencing memo.
The case was investigated by the Everett Police Department and the FBI.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Ye-Ting Woo who heads up the U.S. Attorney’s Office working group on human trafficking.
For additional information please contact Emily Langlie, Public Affairs Officer for the United States Attorney’s Office, at (206) 553-4110 or Emily.Langlie@USDOJ.Gov.