Deshawn King of Allentown, PA, was sentenced on February 5, 2015, to 293 months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking; two counts of sex trafficking; and two counts of attempted sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion. King’s co-defendant, Daniel Blount, also pleaded guilty and was sentenced last July to 20 years in prison.
King and Blount ran their sex trafficking operation by recruiting heroin-addicted women to perform commercial sex acts at their direction. They kept them under their control with force and fear, withholding the women’s supply of drugs, threatening to kill them, and raping them repeatedly. They kept all the proceeds from the women engaging in commercial sex acts.
The case was prosecuted in federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by Assistant United States Attorney Sherri A. Stephan.