An Allen County arrest for child trafficking is now a federal case.

On Friday, federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Patrick J. Davis, 29. In that document, he is charged with sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion.

Davis was arrested this month on state charges of rape, promotion of human trafficking, sexual misconduct with a minor and attempt to promote prostitution. It is unclear what will happen with the state case, which is set for trial in August.

In March, Fort Wayne police officers uncovered the scheme to pimp out a 14-year-old girl when they stopped to check on an illegally parked car with out-of-state license plates.

According to federal court documents, Davis met the girl on Facebook this year. She told him she was under 15, and he said he didn’t care. Davis instructed her on how to run away from home, telling her to collect valuables that they could sell to make money.

The teen hadn’t been in his car very long when he told her he was going to prostitute her out on the website Backpage.com. He told her a few days later he was going to call her "Alexis" because that was what she was going to do for him: Earn him enough money to buy him a Lexus, according to court documents.

Davis took the girl’s cellphone from her and deactivated her Facebook account so it would be harder for her to be found, according to court documents.

Davis took her to the home of Sonnie Thompson, a Fort Wayne woman with a criminal history for promoting prostitution. There the plan changed and Davis and others talked about dyeing the girl’s hair platinum blond, giving her blue contacts and advertising her as "Mattie." The plan was to get her listed on the website by the evening of March 29, according to court documents.

They never got the chance. Officers discovered the girl in the vehicle just before 2 p.m. March 29 and she was taken from their custody, according to court documents.

Before he met the girl, Thompson tasked Davis with recruiting girls for prostitution. She told him to "make the girls trust him and love him," according to court documents.

Once he gained their trust, he was to turn the girls over to Thompson for a 50 percent cut in the prostitution proceeds.

Thompson is not charged in federal court, but according to Indiana court records she has convictions for both promoting prostitution and prostitution.

Her probation on the promoting prostitution charge was modified just days before the state case against Davis was filed.

rgreen@jg.net