Chicago's Facebook Prostitution Ring

Chicago's Facebook Prostitution Ring

A set of twin brothers from Chicago who have a history of arrests for sex trafficking have been arrested again, this time for opening a sex business run over social media outlets like Facebook.

Twin brothers Tyrelle and Myrelle Lockett are accused of creating a sex business sold exclusively over social media. The pair were only 17-years-old when they were charged with their first sex charges, but their first convictions did not put a halt to their exploitation of vulnerable women.

Now, at 21, the twins once again stand charged as pimps running a prostitution business in Chicago.

“Myrelle is accused of attempting to force a woman he met on the Internet into prostitution,” a recent report says. “Tyrelle is being held on federal charges of trafficking in underage girls. Authorities say he took sex trafficking completely digital, one of a new generation of pimps who need only a smartphone to recruit girls, take pictures, post ads, and make appointments with johns.”

Myrelle’s newest arrest came after he cajoled an 18-year-old woman he met on Facebook to leave her Minnesota home and come to Chicago. But after she arrived it became clear that the criminal wanted to turn her into a prostitute.

She escaped his clutches by climbing a fence and running to police.

For his part, brother Tyrelle didn’t waste time with subterfuge. He started a Facebook account forthrightly telling women that they could “make money” with him.

Investigators found a series of conversations between Tyrelle and girls that visited his page, conversations that showed him attempting to cajole girls into becoming his prostitutes.

Police say he did convince a few, one a 14-year-old girl:

As recounted in the complaint, Minor C and a girl identified as Minor B were lured by the promise of quick cash. Tyrelle allegedly picked them up at a mall in Muncie and drove them to a Chicago-area hotel. Sexually suggestive cellphone photos of them were posted as part of an ad on the website Backpage, which has origins in the Village Voice and is now considered by the Cook County Sheriff’s Office to be a major facilitator for prostitution.

Police say that Tyrelle gathered some $3,000 from “clients” who expected to use his “services.”

Eventually several of the girls turned witness against him, and he was arrested.

The brothers are both headed back to court – Tyrelle on Friday – where they are reportedly planning to plead not guilty.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.

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