Mike Jeffries, former CEO of the iconic Abercrombie & Fitch clothing store chain, was arrested Tuesday in Florida on sex trafficking and interstate prostitution charges, prosecutors announced.
Jeffries’s longtime romantic partner Matthew Smith was also arrested, along with a third man, James Jacobson. The three face one count of sex trafficking and 15 counts of interstate prostitution.
Prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York allege that Jacobson recruited young men for Jeffries and Smith for “sex events” held at their homes and in various countries around the world, including England, France, Morocco, St.
Barts, and Italy. They “employed coercive, fraudulent and deceptive tactics in connection with the recruitment, hiring, transportation, obtaining, maintaining, solicitation and payment of the men to engage in commercial sex,” prosecutors allege.