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RIVERSIDE, California – A resident of Quail Valley who pleaded guilty to sex trafficking charges – and admitted forcing a 14-year-old girl to work as a prostitute – was sentenced today to 210 months in federal prison.
Kawaum Marquez Scott, 24, received the 17½-year sentence from United States District Judge Virginia A. Phillips.
Scott pleaded guilty in May to two counts of sex trafficking of a child.
Scott’s codefendant – Nekeyia Necole Weatherspoon, who also used the name “Keey Bee,” 22, of Perris – pleaded guilty at the same time to one count of conspiracy to engage in child sex trafficking.
According to court documents, Scott and Weatherspoon forced a 14-year-old victim into prostitution. The defendants, who took photos of the victims and used the pictures to advertise services on the Internet, drove the victim to destinations in Hemet to engage in prostitution, made her use an alias, and advised her to tell male customers that she was 18 years old. Scott and Weatherspoon took all the money paid to the girl for the sex acts.
According to court documents, on one occasion in October 2012, Scott and Weatherspoon brought the victim to a motel in Hemet, where she engaged in sex with multiple men over a two-day period, and received approximately $2,500 in payment, all of which went to the defendants.
“Scott knowingly sold a child to adult men for sex,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed with the court. “He did so repeatedly and without regard for her safety or well-being. He provided her with drugs and alcohol while she worked for him. He threatened the child victim and her family, and at one point used force to retrieve money from her that he perceived to be his.”
Weatherspoon is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Phillips on September 8. In a plea agreement for Weatherspoon, prosecutors and the defense agreed that she should be sentenced to between 84 and 168 months in federal prison.
The investigation in this case was conducted by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which are members of the Inland Child Exploitation Task Force (ICEP), a multi-agency effort that investigates matters of child exploitation, primarily the sexual trafficking of minors.
Release No. 14-093