A registered sex offender who pimped out a teenager for call girl services in the Riverside metropolitan area and elsewhere pleaded guilty Tuesday to human trafficking.
Deirdrick Dayvon Bradford, 31, of Rosamond admitted the felony count under a plea agreement with the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office. In exchange for his admission, prosecutors agreed to drop a related charge against Bradford.
The plea deal was announced during a status hearing Tuesday before Riverside County Superior Court Judge Melissa Hale, who scheduled a sentencing hearing for Jan. 12 at the Riverside Hall of Justice. There was no indication of a potential term of imprisonment.
The judge left the defendant’s bail set at $85,000. He’s being held at the Benoit Detention Center in Indio.
According to an arrest warrant affidavit filed by the Riverside Police Department, Bradford met the 16-year-old victim, identified in court documents only as “A.F.,” during the summer, coaxing her into working for him as a prostitute.
The sex trafficking operation was uncovered during an FBI investigation that was turned over to the police department’s Vice Squad in August after agents confirmed the juvenile was from Riverside. By the time detectives interviewed her, she had been placed in a group home for troubled and runaway teens, court papers stated.
“She admitted to being on escort websites, but claimed her mother posted the ads,” the affidavit said.
Her mobile phone was seized, and a search revealed conversations involving A.F. and a Snapchat user telling her “to send him money — $150,” and there were “screenshots (of him) managing the victim’s ads on Megapersonals, saying he would `bump’ or repost her ad for more visibility,” according to the declaration.
Further investigation confirmed the girl’s images had been circulated on sex-oriented sites as enticements, including videos of her nude, touching her intimate parts, police said.
Detectives ultimately confirmed Bradford was the youth’s handler, and had been trafficking her in Riverside, Los Angeles and Phoenix. In Riverside, the girl was situated near the Tyler Mall to perform services, police said.
The victim evidently tried to alert Bradford that police were on to him, advising via phone message to “delete your Snapchat … and `go ghost,”’ according to the affidavit.
Coordinating with the U.S. Marshals, detectives tracked the defendant down in Phoenix on Oct. 24, where he was arrested without incident. He was immediately extradited to California.
According to the California Megan’s Law web portal, the defendant has a prior felony conviction for pimping a minor in 2015, requiring him to register as a sex offender under state Penal Code section 290.