Pair who ran sex trafficking operation involving teens sentenced
Two men who put more than a dozen women and girls to work as prostitutes throughout Southern California, running the sex trafficking operation out of motels in Hemet, were each sentenced today to 15 years and four months in state prison.
During a hearing last month at the Banning Justice Center, Rodrick Rozel Morris, 25, and Daniel Lee Simpson, 19, both of Hemet, admitted felony charges stemming from an investigation by the Riverside County Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force.
Morris pleaded guilty to two counts of pimping and one count of inducing a minor to engage in commercial sex acts, while Simpson admitted three counts of pimping, two counts or procuring a person for the purpose of prostitution and one count of inducing a minor to engage in commercial sex
acts.
In exchange for their admissions, the District Attorney’s Office dropped five related counts against Morris and eight related charges against Simpson.
Superior Court Judge Becky Dugan certified the terms of the plea deals and imposed the sentences stipulated by the prosecution and defense.
A third co-defendant, 24-year-old Marvonte Deon Dolberry, was determined earlier this year to be mentally incompetent to stand trial and was committed to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.
Task force investigators, who include deputies and law enforcement officers from multiple municipalities, arrested Dolberry in January 2018 after a 15-year-old runaway girl and her 18-year-old female friend were caught performing a sex act on a 30-year-old motorist in his vehicle near San Jacinto, according to sheriff’s Sgt. John Sawyer.
The ensuing investigation led to a motel in the 800 block of Florida Avenue in Hemet, where Dolberry was questioned and ultimately arrested, Sawyer said.
Over the next eight months, a total of 14 females — 10 of them under 18 years old — were identified as sex trafficking victims managed by the defendants, the sergeant said. In addition to the Hemet area, they were providing sexual services in parts of Orange and San Diego counties, investigators said.
Morris and Simpson were arrested last August.
None of the defendants had documented prior felony convictions.
