Prosecutors said dozens of men had accused Michael Jeffries and two others of coercing them into sex acts during Mr. Jeffries’s tenure at the company.
Michael S. Jeffries, the former longtime chief executive of Abercrombie & Fitch, was indicted on Tuesday on charges of running an international sex-trafficking scheme during several years of his tenure at the company, federal prosecutors said.
Prosecutors in Brooklyn accused Mr. Jeffries, who ran the clothing retailer from 1992 to 2014, of using force, fraud and coercion to lure dozens of men to events around the world, where they were sexually exploited by Mr. Jeffries and his romantic partner. The indictment, which includes accusations from 15 people who said they had been coerced into sex acts, echoes allegations first unearthed last year by a BBC investigation and a class-action lawsuit accusing Mr. Jeffries of using the prospect of modeling jobs at Abercrombie to exploit and abuse them.
Mr. Jeffries and his partner, Matthew Smith, were arrested in Florida on Tuesday morning and are expected to appear in federal court in West Palm Beach later in the day, said John Marzulli, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. A third person, James Jacobson, was also arrested on Tuesday, in Wisconsin, in connection with the case and will appear in federal court in St. Paul, Minn., Mr. Marzulli said.
From 2008 to 2015, Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Smith employed Mr. Jacobson to act as a recruiter, according to the indictment. Mr. Jacobson paid men to engage in sex acts with him; he would then choose the ones who would travel to events in New York City, the Hamptons and elsewhere across the globe for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex, prosecutors said.
Mr. Jeffries “was using his power, his wealth and his influence to traffic men for his own sexual pleasure, and that of his romantic partner,” Breon S. Peace, the U.S. attorney for New York’s Eastern District, said at a news conference announcing the indictment.
The former executive and his co-conspirators convinced aspiring male models that attending their secretive events, which were operated by staff bound by nondisclosure agreements, could lead to modeling opportunities, according to the indictment. The men said Mr. Jeffries threatened them, warning that failure to comply with requests for certain acts during the events could harm their career prospects, prosecutors said.
