WASHINGTON — A Woodbridge, Virginia, man was convicted Wednesday by a federal jury for sex trafficking a 14-year-old girl and a 16-year-old girl.
Steve Nowell, 64, often paid to have sex with the girls, and he was identified as a “regular commercial sex customer” who paid one or both of the girls for sex on at least 23 occasions, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a release.
Nowell was a customer of a prostitution ring led by Michael Gunn, and the two girls were trafficked over the course of two years around the D.C. area, prosecutors said.
When law enforcement officials searched Nowell’s home, they found hidden cameras that secretly recorded at least one of the girls and others in “various stages of undress,” prosecutors said. Officials also found nude photos of one of the teens posing in places around his home.
Prosecutors said Nowell admitted to paying for sex with one of the teen girls, but claimed to be unaware of her real age.
Nowell will be sentenced on Nov. 30 and faces a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison.
A federal jury convicted Gunn in September 2017; he was sentenced to 30 years in prison earlier this year. Prosecutors said Gunn’s co-conspirators, Angel Gunn and Vanessa Dominguez, helped him in sex trafficking; they both pleaded guilty and also face jail time.
