Former Abercrombie & Fitch chief Mike Jeffries arrested on federal sex trafficking charges

NEW YORK– Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Michael Jeffries and two other men have been arrested on charges of sex trafficking and interstate prostitution, a spokesman for federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Details of the criminal charges were not immediately available. They come after years of allegations of sexual misconduct. made in civil lawsuits and the media, from young people who said Jeffries lured them with promises of modeling work and then forced them to perform sex acts.

Jeffries’ attorney, Brian Bieber, said by email that he would “respond in detail to the allegations after the indictment is unsealed, and as appropriate, but that he intends to do so in the courthouse – not in the media .”

Information about attorneys for the other defendants was not immediately available.

Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney Breon Peace and FBI and police officials were scheduled to hold a news conference later Tuesday.

Jeffries left New Albany, Ohio-based Abercrombie & Fitch in 2014.

In a civil lawsuit filed last year in New York, Abercrombie was accused of allowing Jeffries to run a sex trafficking ring during his 22-year tenure. It said Jeffries had model scouts who scoured the Internet for victims, and that some potential models became victims of sex trafficking.

Abercrombie said last year it had hired an outside law firm to conduct an independent investigation after the BBC aired a report on similar allegations.

The BBC investigation involved a dozen men who described attending events involving sex acts that they said were organized by Jeffries and his partner, Matthew Smith, often at his New York home and hotels in London, Paris and elsewhere.

When the civil lawsuit was filed in New York last year, Bieber declined to comment on the allegations.