By Boynton Beach Police, July 24, 2015 – A two-night undercover operation led to the arrest of 11 prostitutes and two pimps, as well as the seizure of drugs and information about a shooting investigation.
Operation Give Me a Call focused on juveniles being prostituted via online social bulletin boards in the hopes of police locating missing or runaway teens.
While none of the prostitutes arrested were juveniles, detectives did receive information about some of their locations and were able to provide intelligence to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Detectives from the Boynton Beach Police Department along with members of the South Florida Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and the FBI teamed up for the operation, which was held Wednesday and Thursday nights in a hotel room in Boynton Beach.
Detectives responded to advertisements for sexual encounters on Backpage.com. The women showed up at the hotel and made a deal to trade sex money for sex with the undercover detectives. They were then arrested.
One of the women who responded to the hotel provided detectives with information about a shooting that occurred Wednesday afternoon on Southeast Second Street.
Detectives charged the following women with prostitution: Marsha Jackson, 32; Tara Fletcher of Boynton Beach, 28; Jessica Erb of Boynton Beach, 19; Ariela Mintka of Boynton Beach, 24; Tiara Pate of Cleveland, Ohio, 22; Rimbow Gomez of Boynton Beach, 26; Jennifer Dibiase of Lake Worth, 30; Brittney Owens of West Palm Beach, 29; Leslie Arnsperger of Dania Beach, 29; Rachel Cope of Las Vegas, Nevada, 35; and Stephanie Schoch of Boynton Beach, 28. Two men – Anthony Walker of Las Vegas, Nevada, 32; and Willie Cooks of West Palm Beach, 36 – were charged with living off earnings of prostitution and providing transportation for the purposes of prostitution.
All were booked into the Palm Beach County Jail.
