PANAMAMA CITY BEACH — One person has pleaded guilty and another was convicted of running a human trafficking ring that forced women in to prostitution across North Florida and Alabama.
The guilty plea and conviction were announced in a news release from the United States Attorney’s Office Northern District of Florida on June 20.
Chad Cornelius Seymore, 49, of Dothan, Alabama, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; receiving benefits from sex trafficking; interstate travel in aid of racketeering; and money laundering.
Kimberly Robinson Gandy, 47, of Gulfport, Mississippi, was convicted of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; and money laundering.
According to the release, Seymore worked with others to bond women out of county jail and force them into commercial sex acts across North Florida and Alabama over a four-year period. The release said he also preyed on drug-addicted women at hotels and used advertisements online and threatened them with violence.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Gandy worked with Seymore to traffic women in Panama City Beach and Destin while using online money exchange platforms to transfer funds from the sex acts.
While Gandy doesn’t have a file in the Bay County Clerk of Court, Seymore does for an incident in Panama City Beach.
According to an arrest affidavit, between December 2023 and January 2024, Seymore coerced and recruited a woman into prostitution while at the Baymont by Wyndham Hotel in Panama City Beach. On Jan. 2, 2024, officers from the Panama City Beach Police Department responded to a report of trespassing at a hotel room. The occupants left, but their victim was hiding from them in the lobby when police walked in.
She told the officers she was being held against her will and forced into prostitution. They took her to the police department, where she explained her story.
The woman said she was in a county jail in another state and couldn’t afford her $500 bond. Another female inmate gave her Seymore’s phone number, and he offered to pay the bond in exchange for her paying it back.
She told police that when she was bonded out, she asked Seymore to take her back to her residence. He refused and said they were going to Panama City Beach, brandishing a handgun and telling her she was going to pay her debt off by working in prostitution. He told the woman that if she didn’t follow his instructions he would kill her, somebody else would kill her or she would be going to jail, according to the affidavit.
At the hotel in Panama City Beach, he forced himself upon her and got her to follow through with other sex acts by physically assaulting her, according to the affidavit. Court documents show that he eventually stopped, saying he didn’t want to “damage the merchandise.”
Over the course of the next three days he took her to hotel rooms in Fort Walton Beach and Panama City Beach where she was forced into sex acts with other people, according to the affidavit.
A warrant was issued for Seymore’s arrest on Jan. 3, 2024, and he was arrested the next day.
Seymore’s sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 15. and Gandy’s sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 15, both in Tallahassee federal court.
“Thanks to the tireless efforts of our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners who investigated this case, and the tenacious work of the federal prosecutors and support staff in my office, we have dismantled this sex trafficking conspiracy and obtained justice on behalf of its victims,” John P. Heekin, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Florida, said in the release.
The Leon County Sheriff’s Office, Homeland Security Investigations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Dothan, Alabama Police Department, Panama City Beach police, Panama City police, the United States Marshal’s Service, the Bay County Sheriff’s Office, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office, the Walton County Sheriff’s Office, and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama all assisted.
This article originally appeared on The News Herald: Human trafficking scheme in Panama City Beach, Fort Walton Beach and Destin broken up
Reporting by Dylan Gentile, Panama City News Herald / The News Herald
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
