29 charged with sex trafficking

The Somali gang members, with nicknames like Fatboy, Forehead and Pinky, passed the girls around like chattel for sex with other gang members or with paying customers. One girl they sold for liquor. Another they pimped for a blunt. Sometimes, they picked the girls up from school, to have sex in apartments or abandoned garages or even in a restroom stall in a suburban shopping mall.

Twenty-nine people, mostly from the Twin Cities, are accused of running an interstate human trafficking ring that sold Somali girls — one as young as 12 — into prostitution. In a federal indictment made public in Nashville on Monday, officials accused gang members of running a decade-long prostitution business that included credit card fraud and burglary totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their alleged crimes crossed state lines, as investigators say girls were driven from the Twin Cities to Nashville and Columbus, Ohio. Another victim was allegedly sexually assaulted in Seattle — via redwolf.newsvine.com