A former police officer has pleaded guilty to being a pimp for his 19-year-old wife, who agreed to call him ‘master’ and handed over all of her earnings.
Lamin Manneh, 32, a former Baltimore cop, entered his plea in federal court on Wednesday, admitting that he had advertized the services of his teen wife and another woman online.
Between February and May 2013, his prostitution business served more than 300 customers who met the women for sex at hotel rooms and homes, according to an FBI investigation.
Manneh drove the women to the meetings and waited outside. He carried his service weapon and agreed to intervene if the clients became aggressive, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
He would rent hotel rooms and an apartment to allow ‘in-calls’ or drive the women – both of whom lived with him – to locations chosen by their clients, the Baltimore Sun reported.
Manneh kept all his wife’s prostitution earnings and a percentage of the other woman’s.
He was arrested in May after an undercover police officer on a child-sex trafficking task force responded to one of his online ads and set up a meeting.
The undercover officer met with the wife, Marissa Manneh, in a hotel room near to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport as Manneh waited in the parking lot.
His wife was arrested when she told the officer: ‘You give me the $100 and then you can [have sex] with me.’
After her arrest, she said her husband ‘posts the ads and uses his credit cards to do so. He drives her from date to date since she cannot drive,’ according to the arrest report.
Business: 19-year-old Marissa posted images of her ‘working’ to her Facebook page. She was initially charged with prostitution but this was later dropped. Her husband took all of her earnings, prosecutors said
She was arrested on a prostitution charge but it was dropped in September.
Prosecutors said Mrs Manneh had entered into a ‘contract of slavery’ with him and agreed he was her ‘master’. In images posted on Facebook, she tags herself ‘slave’ and Manneh ‘master’.
Manneh could get up to five years in prison when he is sentenced on May 8.
Manneh’s attorney could not be reached for comment.
After his arrest in May, Baltimore City Police Deputy Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez called the allegation ‘a disgrace and embarrassment to every member’ of the police force.
‘We expect every member of this department to hold themselves to the highest of professional standards,’ he said in a statement. ‘Our colleagues and our community deserve nothing less.’
