A sex trafficker has been sentenced to prison for 15 years and six months for turning two teenage girls into prostitutes after convincing them to come to Charlotte with the promise of shelter, food, and security, according to Acing U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose.
Charlotte resident 32-year-old Tony Lee Drum has been charged with two counts each of transporting minors across state lines for the purposes of prostitution and trafficking of minors.
Court records show Drum met one of the girls on social media and the other through a telephone chat service.
He then drove out of North Carolina twice to retrieve each of the girls and bring them to Charlotte to be prostitutes, according to records.
One of the girls, who was 14 years old, was identified as a missing person by a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer when he saw her walking on a city street alone in September of 2013.
The second girl was found by police sleeping in Drum’s car as he was being served his arrest warrant for sex trafficking the first girl. The second girl’s home state and age weren’t available as of Tuesday.
Drum was also sentenced to a lifetime of supervised release by U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn Jr. at the end of his sentence.
Drum is in custody pending transfer to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
