OKLAHOMA CITY – An Oklahoma City man and woman were sentenced to prison Wednesday for child sex trafficking of 14- and 15-year-old girls.
Maurice Johnson, 37, and Tonya Gum, 44, were sentenced for conspiracy to commit child sex trafficking.
According to court records, in October 2014, Johnson, assisted by Hiram Mitchell, engaged in sex trafficking of two juvenile females and an adult female.
As soon as the 14-year-old girl was “recruited,” Johnson told her to start calling phone numbers from the escort section of the Yellow Pages to find Tonya Gum, whom he knew as “Carmen.”
At the time, Gum operated at least 20 phone numbers listed in the escort section of the Oklahoma City Yellow Pages.
[protected-iframe id=”0e5c675ba1fb8729fd88e1b3f6dd33c1-29519643-98557584″ info=”//player.ooyala.com/static/v4/stable/4.16.8/skin-plugin/iframe.html?ec=c2YmhndjqIEIcVjTGinEQM8gCXDOYztK&pbid=df513009265e4427aaf5f0342a75c90e&pcode=w1cHE6To2EhAeIt2mx2p9196-TtN” width=”640″ height=”480″ frameborder=”0″]
The 14-year-old victim made contact with Gum and sent photographs of herself and the adult female. After that, Gum began arranging commercial sex transactions between her established customer base, new customers who called her phone lines, and the females under Johnson’s control.
Johnson drove the girls to hotels, residences, and commercial spaces, where the customers paid in cash for sex.
After each commercial sex transaction, Gum met the girls at different locations in the metro to receive the proceeds, which Gum and Johnson split. They did not give any money to the victims they trafficked.
A federal grand jury indicted Johnson on December 3, 2014. He pled guilty to child sex trafficking on January 30, 2015. He will serve five years on supervised release after his 240-month prison term.
Gum was indicted by a federal grand jury on June 16, 2015, along with co-defendant customers. On November 19, 2015, she pled guilty to conspiracy to commit child sex trafficking. She will serve three years on supervised release after her 48-month sentence.
Hiram Mitchell is currently serving a prison term of ten years after his guilty plea to child sex trafficking on January 29, 2015.
In June 2017, one of the group’s customers, Curtis Anthony, was found guilty of conspiracy to engage in child sex trafficking and the substantive offense of child sex trafficking after a jury trial.
Trung N. Duong, another customer co-defendant of Gum and Anthony, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit child sex trafficking on May 9, 2017. Duong and Anthony await sentencing.
