Visalia man gets federal prison for sex trafficking young girls

A Visalia man was sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison on Monday for the sex trafficking of a minor, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Tyrell Richmond, 33, plead guilty on Dec. 14, 2015, to prostituting three 16-year-old girls, all runaways, for one week in both Visalia and Fresno. He wouldn’t allow the girls to leave their motel room, other than to get ice, and collected all the money the girls received, according to court documents.

On June 21, 2014, the FBI’s Fresno Child Exploitation Task Force and members of the Fresno Police Department’s vice unit conducted undercover operations targeting prostitution rings that appeared to use underage victims, where they found and detained the three girls at a Fresno motel.

At the sentencing, one of the victims testified about the trauma she endured from Richmond.

In imposing the sentence, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence J O’Neill described Richmond’s conduct as “horrid” and noted the serious impact it had on the victims.

This story was originally published April 11, 2016 at 6:57 PM with the headline "Visalia man gets federal prison for sex trafficking young girls."