United States v. Flanders, 752 F.3d 1317 (11th Cir. 2014)

Defendants Flanders and Callum engaged in a scheme to lure aspiring models to South Florida, drug them with Benzodiazepines, film them engaging in sexual acts and distribute the film for profit. The two were convicted on conspiracy charges and multiple counts of inducing women to engage in sex trafficking through fraud and benefitting from that scheme. The two were sentenced to a total imprisonment term of life, including sixty month terms for the conspiracy charge and life terms for each of the sex-trafficking charges to run consecutively to each other. On appeal Flanders challenged his conviction on sufficiency of the evidence grounds. He claimed the conspiracy conviction could not be sustained because there was insufficient evidence of an agreement between the Defendants or of an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy. The Court held that evidence that Flanders represented himself as a Bacardi agent and a fictitious female employee of a modeling agency, together with evidence that Callum referred to the fictitious female employee and used phrases Flanders used to lure the models, was sufficient to establish an agreement amongst the Defendants to defraud the victims and constituted overt acts in furtherance of the agreement. Additionally, the Defendants challenged their convictions on double jeopardy grounds, claiming that convictions under 18 U.S.C. §1591(a)(1) and (a)(2) were multiplicitous. The Court held that Section 1591(a)(1) requires the prosecution to prove that the defendant was criminally responsible for the recruitment or enticement of a person with the knowledge that such person will be fraudulently induced to engage in a commercial sex act. By contrast, Section 1591(a)(2) only requires participation in a venture which has recruited a person for such purposes and that the defendant receive valuable benefit from his participation. Applying the Blockburger test, the Court held that the each subsection of the trafficking statute requires proof of different elements that the other does not and that convictions under each subsection do not result in a violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.