Three people have been indicted by a grand jury on human trafficking charges in Maryland. Officials said that the victims were lured in by internet ads for modeling jobs, but were forced into selling themselves for sex.

The operation have  started in 2013, but the investigation began in 2015 when Prince George’s County police made an arrest. They then started looking into online classified ads of a company calling itself “Pink Pleasure Entertainment.” Court documents, released on Tuesday claimed that the "escort modeling company" was a front for an alleged prostitution operation that used women who had responded to the ad, and later they were forced into providing sexual services to clients.

The indictments alleged  between 2013 and 2015, Rashid Marwin Mosby, Terra Marie Perry and Joshua Isaiah Jones took out hundreds of ads on the internet classified site backpage.com. The ads for Pink Pleasure Entertainment claimed that it was a modeling and escort agency, but the court documents said that it was much more than that.

The victims were allegedly forced into sexual encounters through coercion, deception intimidation and physical violence. The indictment further said that the women were then forced to turn over money from the sexual encounters to the three defendants.

Authorities said that Mosby and Perry are in police custody while Jones remains at large.

All three are charged with several charges of conspiracy human trafficking, human trafficking of a minor, human trafficking and receiving earnings of a prostitute.

By Prakriti Neogi