The former chief executive of the Abercrombie and Fitch clothing giant has pleaded not guilty to trafficking male models for sex parties around the world, US prosecutors said on Friday.
Mike Jeffries, 80, who was arrested on Tuesday, was arraigned on Friday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, where he denied the charges.
Jeffries, whose lover Matthew Smith has also been charged, was joined by his wife and son as he signed a US$10 million bail bond.
Photo: AFP
He will be subject to house arrest and electronic monitoring as he awaits trial.
Jeffries, Smith and the pair’s fixer James Jacobson allegedly used a “casting couch” ploy to groom male models to attend sex parties at which victims were plied with alcohol and drugs.
Jeffries is also prohibited from contacting his coaccused, witnesses or victims, court sources said.
The next hearing is to be on Dec. 12 in front of US judge Nusrat Choudhury.
Jacobson also pleaded not guilty to the same charges. He will also await trial under house arrest after paying US$500,000 bond. Smith has not yet been arraigned, but on Tuesday a federal judge in West Palm Beach, Florida, remanded him in custody arguing he was a flight risk as a British passport-holder.
Prosecutors allege that from December 2008 to March 2015 Jeffries, Smith and Jacobson used a combination of “force, fraud and coercion” to traffic men in a sprawling prostitution enterprise.
Charging documents detail 15 anonymous victims, but prosecutors suggest the scale was probably much larger and have appealed for witnesses and victims to come forward.
The case stems from last year’s BBC investigation, The Abercrombie Guys: The Dark Side of Cool, in which several men spoke out about signing non-disclosure agreements for sex events allegedly run by Jeffries.
Abercrombie and Fitch has previously said it was “appalled and disgusted” by the allegations about Jeffries’ behavior and has “zero tolerance for abuse, harassment or discrimination of any kind.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS