A U.S. District Court jury in Seattle on Friday convicted a 43-year-old Auburn man of sex trafficking, including pimping a 15-year-old girl he met in 2013.
Nathan James Bonds was convicted of two counts of sex trafficking of a juvenile and two counts of transportation of a juvenile to engage in prostitution, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office media release. Bonds trolled neighborhoods in South King County looking for teenage girls to recruit into prostitution.
The jury deliberated for five hours following a four-day trial. U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour set a Feb. 10 sentencing date. Sex trafficking of juveniles is punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years, and up to life imprisonment.
According to records in the case and testimony at trial, Bonds was parked outside a Kent convenience store in April 2013 when he spotted and befriended a 15-year-old girl who had run away from home.
Bonds let the girl borrow his cellphone, and then let her sit in his car, out of the rain. Bonds manipulated the girl into accompanying him to a hotel room where he raped her. Over the next few days, Bonds coerced the girl into working for him as a prostitute, convincing her she had no other options.
The Auburn man advertised the girl on Backpage.com and made her give him all of the money she earned from prostitution acts. He also recruited the girl’s 17-year-old friend to work for him as a prostitute. On April 19, 2013, Bonds transported the two teens as well as a drug-addicted, homeless woman that he had also manipulated into working for him as a prostitute, to Portland to engage in prostitution.
Bonds forced the two teens to take sexually explicit photographs, and then used some of those photographs to advertise them on Backpage.com.
The 15-year-old girl estimated she had sex in exchange for money with at least 10 men. She gave all of the money to Bonds, who provided her with the hotel room, fast food and clothes. Bonds told her to charge the men $100 for 30 minutes and $150 or $200 for an hour.
Ultimately, both teens returned to their families and police identified Bonds as a sex trafficker. He was arrested June 5, 2013, and law enforcement recovered the computer and cellphone he used to conduct the prostitution business, both of which contained evidence establishing Bonds’s longtime involvement in prostitution.
The Kent Police and the FBI investigated the case.
Kent Police got the lead on the case when the older teen disclosed to her Kent school staff on April 23, 2013 that she had been with a pimp called “Slim” and her 15-year-old friend the previous weekend.
Police eventually tracked down Bonds, partly through the license plate number of a Dodge Magnum he drove to Oregon, at a friend’s house in Mill Creek. The friend owned the Dodge. Snohomish County deputies arrested Bonds.
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