- She met Marysa on the Internet.
M.K. said that she was in love with her.
Marysa came to pick her up from school.
And there was an adult man with her.
He offered M.K. a spot on the documentary.
You'll get $20 million dollars.
- She had no idea she was going there to have sex with a man.
- He was making a documentary on prostitution.
There's so much manipulation and emotional abuse.
- She has had these horrible images of her
being posted online.
- There were other victims in her same situation
that were in other states.
At the apartment we collected nearly 700 hotel key cards.
- We found child pornography.
- It's like watching the work of a demon walking on the earth.
- Is he reaching out to victims?
Where is he?
[narrator]: In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.
Drug busts, mob stings.
Terrorist takedowns.
[people shouting]
We understand why people want to tell stories about us.
- Mark it. - Freeze!
- FBI.
- FBI! [man in the distance]: Action!
[narrator]: But they don't know the half of it.
What really goes down?
We save that for each other,
when we're talking agent to agent.
This is FBI. True.
[cars honking]
- So, Ingrid, tell me about this phone call that you get.
[narrator]: Kristy Kottis is a 24-year veteran of the FBI.
she worked gangs, crimes against children, as well as human and drug trafficking.
- I get a phone call from Natalie at one of our partner
police stations outside of Seattle.
[narrator]: Ingrid Arbuthnot-Stohl has been
an FBI special agent since 2010.
She investigates sexual exploitation
and the trafficking of juvenils and adult women.
- I'm thinking: "okay ... let's see what you got."
- I was working as a detective with the Redmond Police Department.
[narrator]: After working as a patrol officer,
Natalie D'amico rose to the rank of detective,
focusing on sexual assault cases and crimes against children.
- Natalie starts telling me this story about a girl we're calling M.K.
This girl just came in to file a complaint about harassment.
- She came to the police department.
- By herself? - She came with her mom.
- She is 18 years old.
M.K. wanted to meet friends.
She was lonely.
She met Marysa on the Internet.
- After some time online, they built a relationship.
M.K. said that she was in love with her.
- They decided to meet in person.
And at the time, M.K. was in high school.
And Marysa came to pick her up from school.
And little did M.K. know there was an adult man
with her, who Marysa introduced as her boyfriend, David DeLay.
"This is my boyfriend. I live with him.
He takes care of me."
Now her girlfriend has a boyfriend.
M.K. was initially probably caught off guard.
M.K. and Marysa are around the same age.
And then you have this man
who's about 30 years older than them.
And I think David at the time was like 48.
Marysa introduces David as a movie producer.
- Movies I've always, always liked movies.
[rock music]
- There is some intrigue with a movie producer?
I mean, that sounds pretty cool, especially if you're
a teenager in high school. - So we have a situation
where M.K. feels like she has no choice, if she wants
to be with Marysa, she's got to also accept the old man?
- Correct.
She was living at home when she met them.
She eventually moved in with them.
She was 18.
Just graduated.
I mean, you're an adult. If you decide to go live with
someone else, you can do so.
David says he's filming a documentary for HBO.
He had a photo of him outside of a sign that said HBO.
"Oh, hey, look, I'm here for a meeting with HBO."
He offered M.K. a spot on the documentary.
- And what kind of work was she doing?
- She was doing prostitution.
Because he was making a documentary on prostitution.
- His concept was, she would go
engage in an act of prostitution, and then,
after that, he would sit down and film her
and discuss her experience with prostitution.
- I think she was doing the documentary
because it was important to Reese.
- David had her sign a contract.
- And what'd that contract look like?
- A bunch of legal jargon that no 18-year old would understand.
- M.K. believed she was going to get $20 million dollars?
- I think part of this was her age.
- Okay.
- And she was a teenager.
She was developmentally delayed.
So for her, it was very believable.
- Right. - Her first encounter,
she wasn't even expecting it.
- She wasn't told she was going to work as an escort.
I don't think she even knew what that meant.
They just put her in a hotel room and Reese said:
"okay, well, someone's going to come in and I'll be back later."
And she was very confused about this.
And this man came in.
She had no idea she was going there to have sex with a man.
And let's keep in mind, she, you know, had feelings for Reese.
She was in love with Reese, with a female.
She's left feeling traumatized. - Without question.
I can't imagine. - Reese follows back up
and collects the money.
The contract listed out a lot of different stuff
as far as you're going to make this much per month
while working, escorting, and you're going to give me,
you know, a set amount.
It was 12 to $1800 a month in production fees.
- Production fees? - Yes.
- So his framing was, he's a pimp.
He makes the appointments. - No, no.
He did not frame he was a pimp.
He was a producer.
But everything he was doing was fulfilling
what a pimp actually does.
It's starting to very much look like human trafficking.
M.K. was especially vulnerable.
And they really relied upon her.
So they were always trying to convince her to get them more
and more and more money.
- And how many times was she engaged in um-- - Numerous.
- She lost count. It's very typical
in pimping cases, you don't feel like you have an option.
- They had her passwords to everything.
Her phone number got changed.
- Reese just constantly berating her.
She physically abused her.
David was constantly telling her: "No one cares about you.
We care about you."
- There's so much manipulation and emotional abuse
that kept her from leaving.
- She felt like she didn't have a place to go.
She just hit a breaking point and she was like:
"I need to get out of here." She finally took the chance
and called her mom.
- Do we know how David and Reese felt when they got home
and she was gone? - Just enraged about it.
They were texting her nonstop, Reese and David,
like: "you need to come back",
"What are you doing?"
David was blaming Reese.
And David's like: "You need to go fix this.
You need to fix it now."
And Reese started threatening M.K.
[riveting music]
We're going to post all these things on your Facebook account
if you don't come back.
She has had these horrible images of her
being posted on her Facebook account.
- They're of M.K. in provocative positions,
some of which she had no clothing on.
She can't get back into it because Reese changed her
password, so they're in full control of her account.
- One Facebook post said: "I'm 18 and I can express
myself, however I want"
Another said: "I'm starting my own business in the adult industry."
All of her friends and family can see this.
And she's horrified by it. - Oh yeah, I can't imagine.
- M.K told me that David had flown her to places.
She traveled with them to different states.
Interstate.
Crossed the state lines.
[Kristy]: So, Ingrid, what are you thinking?
- You bring in the interstate travel and now you're starting
to get into the federal nexus.
- You realize this is serious.
[Ingrid]: Yes.
- I knew it was much bigger than what one detective
at Redmond Police Department could do.
Based upon what M.K. told me, I learned that there were
other victims in her same situation.
- We open a full investigation,
which gives us broader authority.
I needed to focus on the digital evidence.
Natalie even started showing me printouts of ads
that she'd found. - These escort ads popped up
when I'd image-searched M.K.'s Facebook photos.
- She'd gone on to Backpage.
It's basically a hub for posting prostitution ads.
[suspenseful music]
- So, the phone numbers M.K.
gave me for David and Marysa were on these ads.
[intriguing music]
- I start looking at some of the email accounts
to see what I can get. We went out and did some interviews together.
- Their story sounded pretty similar to M.K.
with a lot of the same details.
One was being on the documentary.
- Some girls were afraid of being blackmailed by David,
so they never reported him to Police.
I start looking at David's online presence.
I started looking at his bona fides for being a producer
for which he was remarkably unsuccessful as a producer.
[laugh]
He would show these girls pictures of him involved
in what appeared to be productions like,
I think a music video for some little local band that he shot.
- As we started talking about where to shoot it from as far
as the weather and the woods and just the kinda general
look we've got here.
- So David, the "HBO producer".
What kind of documentaries does he produce?
- None. [laughs]
- I was trying to think of a nice way to say that,
but, none. - And he doesn't work for HBO.
- No. And HBO confirmed with us that
they had no business dealings whatsoever with David.
- Have you ever seen a case of human trafficking
that's laid out this way to get the victims?
- No, it was very unique.
I've never seen somebody take it from the producer angle.
[suspenseful music]
- He never filmed anyone, and some of them became suspicious
as time went on about this.
- What about Reese? - We learned that Reese was also
victimized by David initially.
That's how they first met.
She was an aspiring musician and so he would say:
"I'll make you a music career."
[Marysa sings]
- David is a very good manipulator.
He had Reese serve as the one who does a lot of recruitment.
so.. - His bottom bitch.
- Yeah. So she would actually do some of the recruitment
for people like: "Oh, I'm a female.
This, this guy, he's really great and he's helping me with
my music career and I think he could really help you too."
[anxious music]
In this case, there were no chains involved,
no threatening them at gunpoint.
In this investigation, fraud and coercion were huge for
the federal statut. I remember calling Nathalie
because I'm looking at this bank statement and it says that
he has $155 million in the bank.
- What? What? - Like, there's no way
this man has $155 million in the bank.
[playful music]
It's like, this doesn't seem right.
And I look, and in the date at the top you can see a cursor
[scoffing]
[playful music]
Oh my God. And then you look at the top of it and you can
literally see at the top of the screenshot--
[together]: The toolbar! [Kristy]: That's fantastic.
- A Word document that had been edited as a bank statement.
- So he made a bank statement.
At some point, we did a search warrant?
- That's correct. There was enough evidence of sex trafficking to convince
a judge to allow a search of their apartment.
- What does that place look like?
- I can still smell it.
It's disgusting.
Marysa and David were not home at the apartment.
[stressful music]
It was exactly the opposite of what I would expect from
somebody who, you know, says he has enough to pay employees $20 million.
[Kristy]: Uh-uh.
- I did find the contract that had M.K.'s signature on it.
You know, corroborating her statement.
- That's obviously fraud.
These are not legal contracts.
- That's great.
Anything else you find there?
- We collected nearly 700 hotel key cards.
- Wait, timeout. 700 hotel key cards?
From different hotels?
- Different hotels.
- Those cards have information on them.
Those cards have the date, the room,
what credit card you used.
- I was able to cross-reference a number of sources
of information to connect half those cards to prostitution.
A lot of the hotel key cards that were there
were the same hotels that M.K. had stayed at.
We have to leave a Return of Service with the copy of a search warrant.
- Yeah. - So now you're looking at
not only what crimes
I'm investigating, but you're looking at everything
I just took from your, your place.
And that evidence points to sex trafficking charges.
I learned at that time that he had an attorney.
I coordinated with his attorney to have him turn himself in,
which is a common tactic.
The attorney will tell their client just turn yourself in.
It's better for cooperation.
The bail was set to $250,000.
He didn't show up to second appearance.
An arrest warrant gets issued. - Right.
[Natalie]: For both David and Reese.
They're now on the run.
I became worried.
He now knows he's facing all this stuff.
Is he destroying evidence?
Is he reaching out to victims?
Is he getting them to change their mind?
Where is he?
David goes from coming in, you know, voluntarily,
to be arrested, to...now you're a fugitive.
- Police looking for two suspects now on the run.
- We had no idea where he is,
I was pretty frustrated and stressed out.
And, you know, now I have like the victims freaking out, calling me.
- We were able to track his movements with
credit card information, and-- - So the FBI drops a subpoena.
And we're watching his credit card traffic.
- Yes.
He made a credit card purchase on an airplane.
They were flying across the country.
So we can get booking information for that.
He went to Chicago.
Gets a hotel in Chicago.
But then our agents give a call to Natalie and say:
"hey, he's on a flight back to Seattle right now"
- Oh, wow. - They were like:
"he's going to be coming into SeaTac tonight."
I was like: "Oh, I'm going. Meet you there!"
We get down there and to Sea-Tac Airport.
And get to the gate.
The flight staff is like:
"okay, everyone has to stay seated."
This is like stuff I've seen on TV.
This is bad ass.
- Absolutely. - I'm walking down the jet way
thinking: "Oh, my gosh. I'm with the FBI."
And I get on the flight.
He's in first class.
David immediately was like: "I'm not saying a word.
Talk to my attorney."
I'm like: "all right".
Very confident that this is not going to impact me.
We bring him to jail.
And then it's a matter of tracking down Reese.
- We find her in a not great hotel in Chicago.
And at that point, I coordinate with our agents in Chicago
to go get her, our fugitive.
- She was extradited back
and also booked into King County Jail.
- It was an amazing feeling.
We were able to catch both of them!
- The two face multiple charges
tonight including promoting prostitution.
Now, police want anyone who knows anything to come forward.
They do expect there are more victims out there.
- Now they're both in jail.
And David and Reese found a way to have
conversations while in jail.
- And now what are these conversations like?
- Horribly manipulative.
- "So what you got to do is you got to go tell them
what you did." - David was convincing Reese
to take the fall for this entire thing.
- Like, I was listening to this going: "gosh, he's good".
I get why they all believed everything he said.
- Um, what other calls was he making from jail?
- Gosh, he was talking to friends, his family members,
his mom especially.
I get a phone call and Natalie is like: "oh crud",
like he was asking his mother to dispose of evidence.
Because he says that this backpack with I think an iPad
and a computer are at his mom's house and he wants her
to get rid of.
Get in my car. Let's go.
And off we go like 90 miles an hour.
Almost get pulled over.
We didn't have a warrant yet.
So when I showed up, the dad was home and we just kind of
had to sweet talk the dad into giving us consent.
- But then we learned that his daughter
had the iPad and MacBook Pro.
- Where's the Daughter?
- In the Seattle area.
- How old is she?
- She was older than Marysa, wasn't she?
- Early twenties. - He had given those things
to her and had purposely not given her the passwords,
basically hoping she'd wiped them to use for herself.
- Fortunately, she brought those to us and turned them in.
On those devices we found child pornography,
which we now call Child Sexual Abuse Material.
Or CSAM. - Yeah.
- That led us to some other victims as well.
One of the victims that we found, he had actually
approached through a grief chat room.
This girl was 15-years old at the time and her mother
had recently committed suicide.
She was especially vulnerable.
It was: "I love you and I'm going to take care of you.
We're going to get married."
He told her everything she wanted to hear.
And he had her send nude pictures, sexually explicit pictures.
So he caused the production of child pornography.
- I was just going to say, he produced child porn.
- Yeah.
- We would call each other and just be like:
"I can't believe the level of depravity of this person".
- I mean, you know, I worked crimes against children also,
and it's the worst possible evidence to review.
It's like watching the work of a demon walking on the earth.
- We presented our case to the AUSA, who is also female.
- There's a female prosecutor
and then both investigators are female?
- Yes, which is actually pretty unusual.
- Like there's-- - It's very unusual.
- This is a person who hated females, who discussed them via
messages as a property essentially.
And I think that this helped so much for the victims to see
that we can all take him down. - Right.
- As a big group of females.
- Reese agreed to testify against David.
But based upon the jail calls that we were reviewing,
we ended up believing that she maybe wouldn't follow through with that.
So we went without her testimony.
It's so important to see that when victims come forward
that we listen to victims and we're willing to fight for you.
Subtitling: difuze