Ten people were arrested during a huge crackdown on the open-air sex trafficking market in Los Angeles’s Figueroa Corridor.
Six people linked to the local Hoover Criminal Gang, along with a motel manager, were arrested for “sex trafficking children and adults,” a press release from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said.
A 65-count superseding indictment alleges that the Hoover Criminal Gang “largely controlled sex trafficking and prostitution” along the corridor between February 2021–June 2026, with the associates and members acting “as pimps to promote and manage sex trafficking.”
The six members of the Hoover Criminal Gang were charged with crimes such as the sex trafficking of a minor, drug trafficking conspiracy, racketeering conspiracy, and sex trafficking through force, fraud, or coercion, among other crimes.
The six people were identified as Cameron Lockett, 23, of Anaheim; Caleed Mouton, 26, of South Los Angeles; Nakhali Miller, 30, of South Los Angeles; Jorge Melendez, 23, of South Los Angeles; Mauricio Ulloa-Franco Jr., 23, of Palmdale; and Lagrane Lenox, 30, of Compton.
Another person, Mukeshkumar Rambhai Ahir, 45, who worked at the manager of the Stadium Inn & Spas motel in South Los Angeles, was charged with reaping the benefits of the gang’s sex trafficking operation, and having “deposited” roughly $64,581 in funds from the sex trafficking operation between September 2024–January 2026.
Ahir was also charged with “depositing smaller amounts at a time into bank accounts opened for this purpose to avoid banks from reporting large cash deposits.”
“Sex trafficking of young women and children ranks among the worst criminal offenses our office prosecutes — truly the lowest of the low,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli said in a statement. “We hope today’s arrests break the cycle of crime and abuse in one of L.A.’s most notorious human trafficking corridors.”
The superseding indictment states that the gang “worked together to recruit new victims via social media or in person, focusing on vulnerable minor girls and young women,” per the press release:
According to the superseding indictment, the Hoovers worked together to recruit new victims via social media or in person, focusing on vulnerable minor girls and young women, particularly those with financial or emotional struggles or who had run away from home or in the foster care system. Victims were recruited via false promises of a luxurious lifestyle, intimidation, and actual or threatened violence. Pimps also plied their victims with drugs such as oxycodone and amphetamines to create addictions that the pimps could exploit.
The defendants also facilitated each other’s pimping by managing, monitoring, and disciplining their victims, pooling resources to rent motel rooms for commercial sex dates, driving each other’s victims to and from the streets where victims solicited commercial sex work, sourcing third parties to create online profiles for sex advertisements, and sending each other money via Cash App and Apple Pay.
Victims were required to remit all proceeds from commercial sex dates to the pimp. A victim who refused or who otherwise disobeyed a pimp faced discipline, including assaults, branding of a defendant’s [pimp’s] moniker, berating, public humiliation, and withholding of affection, drugs or food.
Figueroa Corridor is described as being “one of California’s most notorious sex markets,” the City Journal reported. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill in 2022 that decriminalized “loitering with intent to commit prostitution.” Former California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a bill in 2016 “prohibiting minors from being charged with solicitation of and loitering with intent to commit prostitution.”
The outlet noted that upon visiting the corridor, “nearly nude women” were seen and that pimps watch the prostitutes from a “nearby phone” or through the use of “low-level watchers.”
“Statistically, the average age of entry for human sex trafficking is between the ages of 12 and 14 years old,” Stephany Powell, who previously served as a sergeant “in an LAPD Vice unit,” told the outlet. “We’d see 14-, 15-year-olds that were out on the prostitution tracks. We also would see 25-to-30-year-olds … some of them had been out on the streets on the prostitution tracks since age 13.”
California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton shared a video in a post on X in which he asked what Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass were doing about the sex trafficking occurring on Figueroa Street.
“I’m here on Figueroa Street in Los Angeles. It’s around midnight on Friday night,” Hilton said. “We’ve been driving up and down 50 blocks. I’m with a non-profit that rescues young girls who have been trafficked for sex. Every year they rescue about 100 or so — sometimes 200 — mostly between the ages of 12 and 14.”
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