Mike Jeffries, who turned Abercrombie & Fitch into a clothing powerhouse, was arrested in West Palm Beach, Fla., as part of a prostitution and sex trafficking case. He’s seen here in 2012.
Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images
Mike Jeffries, who led Abercrombie & Fitch Co. for more than 20 years, is under arrest as part of a federal investigation into a sex trafficking and interstate prostitution case. His arrest comes one year after bombshell allegations emerged in which eight men accused Jeffries and his inner circle of sexually exploiting them at lavish parties around the world.
Also under arrest in the case: Matthew Smith, Jeffries’ longtime romantic partner, who allegedly attended the parties with Jeffries; and James Jacobson, who allegedly recruited victims and acted as a middleman in arranging sex events.
The three were arrested on Tuesday, after a grand jury in New York returned an indictment charging them with one count of sex trafficking and 15 counts of interstate prostitution, according to court documents. Prosecutors allege that Jeffries and Smith “spent millions of dollars to create a massive infrastructure” around “sex events.”
From around 2008 to 2015, federal prosecutors said in a memo filed on Tuesday, Jeffries and Smith “spent prolific amounts on a secret staff to run Sex Events,” The memo says the pair paid for “dozens of men” to travel in the U.S. and internationally for the events. To preserve secrecy, the memo states, the three men allegedly used “a full-service security company that oversaw non-disclosure agreements, conducted background checks and surveilled witnesses, among other things.”
The memo adds that the secrecy agreements prevented victims and witnesses “from disclosing information about the Sex Events, but also from seeking assistance for themselves where needed.” For those reasons, the state called Jeffries to be held on a $10 million bond and $500,000 for Jacobson.
The memo asked that Smith, who is a British national, be denied bond and detained due to his perceived heightened risk to flee.
The case is being handled by the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, which has been working with the FBI and the New York Police Department’s Special Victims Unit.
In a press conference Tuesday, Breon Peace, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said that Jeffries “was using his power, wealth, and influence to traffic men for his own sexual pleasure and that of his sexual partner Matthew Smith.” He said that they used “force, fraud and coercion” for their own personal pleasure.
Peace said the three men charged would fly the alleged victims to places around the world to attend events for the purpose of sex, with Jacobson holding “tryouts” then sending the selected men to Smith to “personally approve” them.
“These prosecutions really depend, as I said earlier, on the bravery of the victims to come forward and tell their stories,” Peace said, adding that there were potentially more victims in this case who had yet to step forward. “I say to all victims: We’re here, we will listen, we will investigate and bring charges where appropriate.”
Brian Bieber, an attorney for Jeffries, told NPR, “We will respond in detail to the allegations after the Indictment is unsealed, and when appropriate, but plan to do so in the courthouse — not the media.”
Jeffries, who abruptly resigned from Abercrombie 10 years ago, was placed under arrest in West Palm Beach, Fla., where he’ll make an initial court appearance on Tuesday. He will later be brought to New York for an arraignment.
Several of the men who made allegations against Jeffries were male models, as NPR reported last October. They described a dynamic in which money and the potential to gain a legitimate job were used as leverage to get them to perform sex acts at events and at Jeffries’ then-home in the Hamptons.
“This experience, I think it broke me,” one man told the BBC, which first reported the allegations. “I think that this stole any ounce of innocence that I had left. It mentally messed me up. But with the language I now have today, I can sit here and tell you that I was taken advantage of.”
Peace, the U.S. attorney, said that his agency first became aware of the accusations against Jeffries through media reports, which he said was not uncommon. He noted that the department has a track record of bringing powerful people to justice, citing its prosecutions against R. Kelly and NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere.
“We don’t hesitate to hold the powerful and wealthy to account,” Peace said.
During his long tenure at A&F, Jeffries took the clothing brand to new heights. But he was also at the center of several controversies. In 2003, Black, Latino and Asian American employees filed a class action lawsuit accusing the company of sidelining them (it was later settled). Accusations also arose that the A&F magazine catalog had become a corporatized example of soft-core porn.
Jeffries further faced criticisms for his focus on making the brand intentionally “exclusionary,” telling Salon in 2006: “That’s why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that.”
He would softly backpedal those remarks in 2013, saying that the quote had been taken out of context but that he regretted that his “choice of words was interpreted in a manner that has offended.”
Jeffries’ sudden departure in 2014 came after a prolonged sales slump for Abercrombie, as well as a string of splashy moves that didn’t pan out for the company.
Recently, A&F has seen a resurgence in the market, using a rebranding to distance itself from its struggles — and from the Jeffries era.
