A twenty-nine year-old
Nigerian U.S policeman identified as, Chukwuemeka Ekwonna, has pleaded guilty
to sex trafficking teenage girls.
The Nigerian man, who is a
former D.C. police officer, was convicted in federal court, on Tuesday, on
charges he solicited two underage teenage girls online and then paid them for
sex.
Chukwuemeka Ekwonna pleaded
guilty to two counts of sex trafficking a minor, while eight other counts
including illegal use of a firearm and robbery were dropped as part of a deal
with prosecutors, court records show.
Under the terms of the
deal, Ekwonna faces between 10 and 20 years in prison when he is sentenced on
May 10, 2019.
Ekwonna admitted to
creating an account on the social media site, Tagged, in 2010, and then sending
messages to many users, offering to pay them to engage in specific sex acts.
Ekwonna exchanged dozens of
messages with a 14-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl, before meeting both
for sex in the back of his car or at motel rooms in the Annapolis area on
multiple occasions.
When he was initially
charged, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Maryland alleged
Ekwonna pointed a gun at the 15-year-old girl and demanded she return the money
he had just paid her during one of their encounters in January 2017.
Ekwonna had been on the
force for roughly 14 months and was fired in April. He applied for the job with
the D.C. police while he was facing a lawsuit for allegedly beating an inmate
at the D.C. jail, where he previously held a job.
The lawsuit was eventually
settled for $20,000. D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said, last year, that the
department was reviewing how Ekwonna was hired with the lawsuit pending.
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