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Federal authorities believe a South Dakota woman was enticed by a Baltimore firefighter to take part in a prostitution ring in Maryland.
Prosecutors say Jamar Simmons, a 30-year-old Baltimore firefighter, and 33-year-old Franklin Coit are the two men behind the crime.
A federal indictment says that they recruited women from seven different states, including South Dakota, to work as prostitutes.
Authorities say the men advertised their service online as "BigCityDates" and ran it out of a Baltimore warehouse.
The website has been shut down, but Simmons' Twitter account advertises the business as a quote, 'adult playground,' and federal prosecutors in Maryland say minors were involved in that playground.
"Any case in which someone under 18 has been recruited to be a prostitute or advertised on the internet as a prostitute, those cases are going to receive the highest priority of attention from the federal government," Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein said.
Court documents say about a year ago, in March of 2012, a South Dakota woman identified by the initials C.F. in court documents was contacted by Simmons.
There aren't many details on how Simmons enticed the woman to Baltimore, but it does say that they made her travel arrangements and when she arrived in Maryland, she worked as a prostitute for about a week.
The federal indictment doesn't go into specifics about what South Dakota city the woman came from or her age, but the two men are now charged with coercion for luring her from her home to take part in the illegal Baltimore sex ring.
Simmons is no stranger to this kind of criminal activity. The CBS station in Baltimore found he was sentenced to probation in 2010 after being caught in a different prostitution sting. However, he didn't lose his job as a firefighter.
Simmons is suspended from the Baltimore fire department without pay as a result of this latest case.
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