Two Hyattsville, Maryland men were both sentenced today to 26 years in prison for sex trafficking three minors throughout the East Coast from September through November 2016.

Acting Assistant Attorney General John P. Cronan of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Acting U.S. Attorney Tracy Doherty-McCormick for the Eastern District of Virginia, Assistant Director in Charge Nancy McNamara of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, Fairfax County Chief of Police Colonel Edwin C. Roessler Jr. and Chief Humberto I. Cardounel Jr. of Henrico County Police Division, made the announcement.

Dennis Davis Jr. aka Dee, 26, and Ivan Williams aka Lucci, 28, were sentenced by Senior U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Judge Ellis ordered Davis and Williams to serve 10 years of supervised release following their 312-month prison sentence. Both defendants were ordered to register as sex offenders. Davis and Williams were each found guilty by a federal jury on Jan. 10, 2018, of three counts of sex trafficking and one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking.

According to evidence presented at trial and court documents, Davis and Williams sex trafficked three underage girls while working with their convicted co-conspirators, Chelsea Canterbury aka Katt, 26, and Rebecca Hamilton aka Becca, 22, also of Hyattsville, Maryland. Davis, Williams and their co-conspirators recruited the three underage girls, whom they trafficked in numerous locations, including Northern Virginia; Richmond, Virginia; Maryland; Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, Georgia. They worked together to post online advertisements of the victims on websites such as Backpage.com offering them for commercial sex with men throughout the region; reserved hotel rooms at which they and the victims would stay when traveling to engage in commercial sex acts; drove the victims to the hotels and other locations where the commercial sex acts occurred; and collected the money given to the victims by the commercial sex customers. The evidence further showed that when two of the minors tried to leave the group, Davis and Williams resorted to violence, including physical force and brandishing firearms. Davis and Williams used the money earned by the victims to create rap music where they bragged about exploiting females, and to fund their day-to-day living expenses.

The FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force investigated the case with substantial assistance from the Fairfax County Police Department and the Henrico County Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorney Maureen C. Cain of the Eastern District of Virginia and Trial Attorney Jessica L. Urban of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) prosecuted the case.

This investigation was a part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.