A man sentenced to 30 years in prison for trafficking of minors | State News

HOUSTON, Texas — A 23-year-old man has been convicted of conspiracy to traffic a minor for sexual purposes, U.S. Attorney Alamdar Hamdani announced.Javon Yaw Opoku, also known as “Glizzy,” pleaded guilty on June 7, 2023. U.S. District Judge George C. Hanks Jr. sentenced Opoku to 365 months in federal prison. In handing down the prison sentence, the court highlighted the duty owed to those wronged by Opoku and the fact that he had lost the right to be with other members of society for a very long time. Restitution will be determined later. Opoku will serve 10 years of supervised release after completing his prison sentence. During this period, he will have to comply with numerous requirements aimed at restricting his access to children and the Internet. Opoku will also have to register as a sex offender.“Opoku spent years exploiting and victimizing little girls and other vulnerable members of our community,” Hamdani said. “Opoku will now spend the next 30 years away from our community, unable to continue to exploit and victimize our girls and our neighbors.” From April 2019 to February 2020, Opoku and his co-conspirators recruited young teenage girls and forced them to engage in sexual acts with clients for money in cars and hotels around the "blade" by Bissonnet. The blade or "runway" is an area near 59 Southwest Freeway and Bissonnet Street in Houston, where traffickers typically place their victims to engage in commercial sexual activity.Opoku and his co-conspirators would pass or reassign victims to each other, teach each other "the pimp game," and force young girls to walk with the blade while Opoku and others kept the profits. Young girls had to pay exit fees or get “beat up” to change pimps. Some traffickers demanded daily quotas from their victims every night. If victims failed to meet their daily quota, they were severely punished with beatings and humiliation. Co-conspirator Jerreck Michael Hilliard, also known as “Jmoney,” was sentenced April 12 to 292 months in federal prison.Opoku will remain in custody pending transfer to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility to be determined in the near future.The Houston Police Department launched the investigation with assistance from Homeland Security Investigations and the Harris County District Attorney's Office, as part of the Human Trafficking Rescue Alliance (HTRA). Established in 2004, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Houston created the HTRA to combine the resources of federal, state and local enforcement agencies and prosecutors, as well as non-governmental service organizations to target human traffickers while by providing the necessary services to those they are victims of. Since its inception, the HTRA has been recognized as both a national and international model for identifying and assisting victims of human trafficking and prosecuting those involved in trafficking crimes.Assistant United States Attorneys Kate Suh and Anthony Franklyn prosecuted the case alongside former AUSA Richard Bennett.