SEATTLE — A Bellingham woman who played a role in a Snohomish County Internet prostitution case has been sentenced to a week behind bars and three months of home detention.
Kelsey Lynn Kirschman, 22, assisted federal investigators in building a case against Jerome Eugene Todd. The Everett man last month was sentenced to 26 years in federal prison for numerous sex-for-sale crimes, including sex trafficking.
Kirschman initially was indicted for conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking. She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in money laundering.
The conviction could have sent Kirschman to prison for nearly three years. Federal prosecutors on Monday asked U.S. District Judge James Robart to sentence her to the week she’d earlier spent locked up, plus home detention and probation. The woman’s cooperation with authorities and mistreatment by Todd, including repeated physical assaults, needed to be recognized, they said.
“It was clearly difficult for Ms. Kirschman to relive the events of this troubled period of her life, but Ms. Kirschman fully honored her agreement to cooperate,” they wrote in court papers.
Todd posted advertisements on Craigslist.org for the prostitutes working for him. The case was investigated by police in Everett and Seattle, the FBI, and the Internal Revenue Service.
Cases such as these are important to IRS investigators because they involve the underground economy and involve human victims, IRS special agent Dan Wardlaw said.
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