New York (AFP) – The former chief executive of the Abercrombie and Fitch clothing giant has pleaded not guilty to trafficking male models for sex parties around the world, US prosecutors said Friday. Mike Jeffries, 80, who was arrested on Tuesday, was arraigned Friday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, where he denied the charges. Jeffries, whose lover Matthew Smith has also been charged, was joined by his wife and son as he signed a $10 million bail bond using a New York home as collateral. He will be subject to house arrest and electronic monitoring as he awaits trial.
Jeffries, Smith and the pair’s fixer James Jacobson allegedly used a “casting couch” ploy to groom aspiring male models to attend sex parties at which victims were plied with alcohol and drugs. Jeffries is also prohibited from contacting his co-accused, witnesses or victims, court sources said. The next hearing will be on December 12 in front of judge Nusrat Choudhury. Jacobson also pleaded not guilty to the same charges. He will also await trial under house arrest after paying half a million dollars bond.
Smith has not yet been arraigned, but on Tuesday, a federal judge in West Palm Beach, Florida, remanded him in custody arguing he was a flight risk as a British passport-holder. Prosecutors allege that between December 2008 and March 2015, Jeffries, Smith, and Jacobson used a combination of “force, fraud and coercion” to traffic men in a sprawling prostitution enterprise. Charging documents detail 15 anonymous victims, but prosecutors suggest the scale was probably much larger and have appealed for witnesses and victims to come forward.
The case stems from a 2023 BBC investigation, “The Abercrombie Guys: The Dark Side of Cool,” in which several men spoke out about signing non-disclosure agreements for sex events allegedly run by Jeffries. Abercrombie and Fitch has previously said it was “appalled and disgusted” by the allegations about Jeffries’s behavior and has “zero tolerance for abuse, harassment or discrimination of any kind.”
© 2024 AFP
