The mother and father accused of pimping two underage girls, 14 and 17 years old, near Disneyland in April have pleaded not guilty and, over opposition from the Department of Justice, demanded release from federal custody on bail.
But U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney declined to reconsider prior bail rejections for Eric Lamar Wells and Tonisha Alecia Moore, who face serious felony charges including sex trafficking of children, conspiracy, aiding and abetting, and transporting minors into prostitution.
Wells and Moore, who are not related to the minors, have a child of their own and remained in federal custody in Santa Ana.
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When authorities learned that the girls had been sold for sex in Las Vegas, Scottsdale, Anaheim and Sacramento and Los Angeles, the state case against Wells and Moore was transferred to the Southern California Innocence Lost Task Force and federal court.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.