Dallas man sentenced to 20 years in prison for trafficking young women

A Dallas man was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking young woman.

39-year-old Demetrius Byrd, who called himself "Staxx Diego" pleaded guilty in March 2022 to sex trafficking.

Plea papers say that Byrd admitted to using social media to recruit young women to work with him in commercial sex trade.

He admitted to trafficking one 17-year-old and two 18-year-olds between 2016 and 2018.

Byrd also said he told one of the women he wanted to date her and picked her up from Oklahoma. On the drive back to Texas he stopped at a hotel and told her to go into a room and do whatever the man inside wanted. Byrd kept the money from the interaction, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas.

For the next six months Byrd forced the woman into sex with customers who found ads online. Plea papers said she told him she wanted to leave, and he punched her in the face and staged his own suicide in an attempt to pressure her to return.

"[Homeland Security Investigations] will spare no resource in ensuring that those who exploit children face justice for their egregious crimes," said Lester R. Hayes Jr., Special Agent in Charge HSI Dallas in a statement.

Byrd was sentenced on Thursday, August 24.