If an FBI agent's affidavit is right, Curtis Maurice Canady Jr. possessed enough cockiness to use the Internet to sell minor girls, ages 15 and 16, for sex this year with anonymous men in Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Anaheim near Disneyland.
Thanks to the excellent work of the Orange County Child Exploitation Task Force and especially its Anaheim Police Department as well as FBI members, Canady is in federal custody today and blocked from bail.
But Canady, 19, isn't happy with living in the custody of U.S. marshals and he wants to go home to his mommy in Los Angeles.
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This week, a taxpayer-supplied defense lawyer asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Nakazato to reconsider his Aug. 7 decision to grant federal prosecutor Michael Anthony Brown's request to deny bail because the defendant is allegedly dangerous and a flight risk, according to court documents.
In hoping to entice Nakazato to change his mind, Canady has promised that his mother and his girlfriend will post bail, and he will agree to home detention at his momma's residence until the case is resolved.
He also volunteered to wear an electronic monitoring device.
It's doubtful Department of Justice officials will agree with the plan, but so far there's no indication on the record what, if any, action Nakazato will take on the request inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse.
According to the FBI affidavit, Canady used Internet photographic “escort” ads to sell the underage girls. One ad in California read, “I'm a sexy mixed hottie with magic touch looking to please. I'm 5'5 with hazel eyes [and] have sexy curves in all the right places. So, if you want some promising fun, I'm the one! Week 60 specials, come play. I'm waiting for you. Call me . . .”
Both minors gave statements about their prostitution activities to law enforcement officers, according to court records.
The defendant, who was arrested July 25 in “Operation Cross Country,” could face a decade in prison if he's eventually convicted of the human sex trafficking charges.
Canady is scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 21 for a preliminary hearing.
(Go HERE to see an update on this article and the defendant's legal moves.)
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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.