Man gets 15 years in federal prison for sex trafficking of minor

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A man is headed to federal prison for 15 years for forcing an Illinois teenager into prostitution in Memphis.

Mitchell Lamont Chest pleaded guilty earlier this year in U.S. District Court to sex trafficking a minor and was sentenced Monday to 15 years and eight months.
Mitchell Chest

The victim's mother and Chicago police had posted fliers throughout Chicago after her daughter went missing in July 2010.

The girl was 14 when she met Chest, 33, in Marion, Ind. She began dating him at 15 and ran away from home to join him in Chicago.

But Chest wanted the teen to prostitute herself to pay their living expenses, according to the affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent Jaime W. Corman.

When the teenager refused, he beat or choked her.

Chest, who has family in Memphis, eventually brought her to Memphis to live.

She called her mother in October and said she was at the Greyhound bus station in Memphis with Chest, who was trying to force her to have sex with men.

The mother called Memphis police, who arrested Chest and took the girl to Juvenile Court as a runaway. The FBI took over the case, which was led by federal prosecutor Steve Parker.

The girl later told the FBI that Chest allowed his cousin to rape her. She also said he and two of his associates held her down and forced her to get his middle name "Lamont" tattooed on her stomach.

During another incident, he made her distract two Hispanic men while he struck them with a baseball bat and took their money, the girl told the FBI agent.

Chest denied all of those allegations, according to court records.

The 15-year-old also claimed Chest pimped a 14-year-old girl, whom he treated "like an animal," only giving her water and making her sleep on the floor, according to the affidavit. She said she helped the girl escape one day when Chest was not home.

He has not been charged with victimizing anyone else.