'Evil': Ohio man goes to prison for sex trafficking girl at Monroeville hotel
A federal judge has sentenced an Ohio man to 12½ years in prison for renting Monroeville hotel rooms and prostituting a girl and two women he brought across state lines.
Donte L. Cole, 40, of Euclid, Ohio transported the girl from Cleveland to the Rodeway Inn & Suites hotel in Pittsburgh’s eastern suburbs in May 2023 to work as a prostitute, Acting U.S. Attorney Troy Rivetti said Wednesday.
Cole later coerced two women to cross state lines for what prosecutors called “commercial sex.”
Cole turned to the internet to market his victims in Western Pennsylvania and elsewhere from April 2023 to that October, prosecutors said.
He pleaded guilty in May in U.S. District Court to sex trafficking of a child and coercion of an adult to engage in commercial sex. He was sentenced Monday.
In addition to incarceration, Cole will face 10 years of supervised release and be required to register as a convicted sex offender, according to U.S. District Judge William S. Stickman IV’s sentence.
Before sentencing, Stickman called Cole’s conduct “evil.”
The Ohio man “victimized minor girls, crossed state lines and treated the girls like property for (his) own gain,” the judge added.
Prosecutors said police saw Cole drop off the girl at the Monroeville hotel in May, then initiated a traffic stop near the Ohio border.
The rented room contained condoms, lubricant and pregnancy tests — but little clothing, prosecutors said. Police saw several individuals going in and out of the rooms.
The adult victims said they were sex workers who sent photos of themselves to Cole so he could make online advertisements, prosecutors said.
The girl, who was 16 this spring, carried two cellphones, one of which had messages discussing payments for sex works, federal court documents show. Prosecutors said she’d been working as a prostitute for Cole since she was 12.
Police returned the girl to her mother’s custody. But five months later, they found her photo in online ads for sex.
Investigators arranged a commercial sex transaction with her at a hotel in Ohio, where the Ohio Human Trafficking Task Force retrieved her on Oct. 6, 2023.
Justin Vellucci is a TribLive reporter covering crime and public safety in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. A longtime freelance journalist and former reporter for the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, he worked as a general assignment reporter at the Trib from 2006 to 2009 and returned in 2022. He can be reached at jvellucci@triblive.com.
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