A Northeast Philly man posed as a woman to run a human trafficking ring. He was convicted in a rare case last week.

GiftCloseGift this articleLink IconCopy LinkEmailEmailFacebook LogoFacebookXXBlueskyBlueskyThreadsThreadsWhat's AppWhatsAppGift this articleLink IconCopy LinkEmailEmailFacebook LogoFacebookXXBlueskyBlueskyThreadsThreadsWhat's AppWhatsAppCloseLink copied to clipboardShareCloseShare this articleLink IconCopy LinkEmailEmailFacebook LogoFacebookXXBlueskyBlueskyThreadsThreadsWhat's AppWhatsAppShare this articleLink IconCopy LinkEmailEmailFacebook LogoFacebookXXBlueskyBlueskyThreadsThreadsWhat's AppWhatsAppCloseLink copied to clipboardA Northeast Philly man posed as a woman to run a human trafficking ring. He was convicted in a rare case last week.For more than a decade, Terrance Jones, 54, ran a human trafficking ring that targeted women in addiction.

A woman was struggling with addiction and looking for a way to make money when she called an escort service she found online.

She was asked a series of questions: How old was she? How tall? How much did she weigh? What color were her eyes and hair?

And then she was told someone would come by soon to take her to her first client.

Later, the woman testified in court last week, a bearded man picked her up and kept her under his control for the next three days. He took her to hotels and short-term rentals across the city and arranged for men to pay her for sex. The man took most of what she earned, she said, then sold her drugs in exchange for the little money she had left.

She got away only when state police found her in a room at the Roosevelt Inn in Northeast Philadelphia.

The woman’s testimony was the centerpiece of a human trafficking case in which state prosecutors accused 54-year-old Terrance Jones of running what he described as an “escort business” from his Lawndale home — but that prosecutors say exploited women for more than a decade.

Jones, they said, posed as a woman, disguising his voice and calling himself “Julia” as he spoke on the phone to build the trust of and recruit vulnerable women across the Philadelphia region to work for the business, called “the Girlfriend Experience.” Once they agreed to work for him, Jones and others controlled them by providing drugs, money, and housing, and coerced them into having sex with men for little pay, said Senior Deputy Attorney General Zachary Wynkoop.

State investigators identified Jones during a two-year probe into his operation, in which authorities said they found more than a dozen victims. In 2024, the attorney general’s office charged 22 people who they said played roles in the criminal enterprise, including drivers, customers, and even Jones’ daughter, who they said helped manage its finances.

Last week, Jones was convicted of human trafficking and involuntary servitude, charges that could send him to prison for decades.

His operation brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, prosecutors said.

In just 10 days in 2023, they said, the business made about $20,000. But Jones and his associates took most of the money, then sold the women drugs and provided them housing and transportation to keep them dependent on the business.

Through it all, Wynkoop said, Jones kept the women “broke and addicted.”

“These traffickers pick women who have unstable lives, a lack of a safety net around them, addiction issues, mental health issues,” the prosecutor said in an interview after the trial. “They very often are picking targets who they believe will be malleable to their cause. They are absolutely profiting off human suffering.”

Advocates and prosecutors say Jones’ case offered a window into a form of exploitation that often remains hidden. Traffickers, they said, exert control that victims can struggle to recognize, police can struggle to discern, and prosecutors can find difficult to prove.

Those challenges were reflected in Jones’ trial. While officials said he victimized more than a dozen women, only one testified in court. Two victims died of an overdose before trial, and investigators could not reach or were unable to interview several others.

“In addition to being a victim of Terrance Jones, many of these women are also still suffering in the throes of addiction,” Wynkoop said. “At some point, a decision was made that we had a woman willing to testify, and that it was better to move forward than continue to delay.”

The obstacles of such cases are also reflected in court records: Just 50 human trafficking cases have been filed in Philadelphia in the last decade, only 11 of them brought between 2020 and 2025, according to data from the district attorney’s office.

Jones’ trial also came as the city grappled with disturbing news of a house in Olney where police believe Raymond Horsch preyed on women in addiction for years, luring them to his home to appear in violent pornographic films in exchange for money, drugs, and housing.

Horsch has been linked to seven missing women, including five who police believe are dead and were last seen in his company. Horsch died last year at 82 from lung issues.

The case has put a spotlight on the vulnerabilities of women in addiction and the resources law enforcement invest in apprehending their abusers.

» READ MORE: A pornographer’s obsession and criminal past blur fact and fiction in missing women mystery

In Jones’ case, Common Pleas Court Judge Deborah Watson-Stokes convicted him of sex trafficking and involuntary servitude. Before the start of the trial, he also pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution, conspiracy, and related crimes. He is scheduled to be sentenced in December.

Most of the others charged alongside Jones in 2024 pleaded guilty to lesser crimes and are awaiting sentencing.

Among them is Thomas Reilly, the bearded man who served as a driver and pimp for the woman who testified at Jones’ trial. He pleaded guilty to sex trafficking, involuntary servitude, and related crimes and is scheduled to be sentenced next month.

Jones’ case hinged largely on the nearly 3,000 calls and text messages that investigators intercepted, along with the testimony of the lone 27-year-old witness.

The woman described three harrowing days in June 2021 during which Reilly, known to her as “Fat Tommy,” drove her to have sex with seven to nine men. They each paid about $250, she said, but Reilly kept all but $20 to $50. She used that to buy Xanax and marijuana from him, she said.

Jones’ attorney, Brad Shuttleworth, tried to undermine the woman’s account. He pointed to inconsistencies between what she said at the trial and what she had said before a grand jury and in testimony in related cases.

Shuttleworth said the woman willingly had sex with the men and asked for the drugs.

Advocates who work with women who fall prey to trafficking in Philadelphia say operations like Jones’ are not uncommon.

“I would say they’re prevalent,” said Heather LaRocca, social services director for the Salvation Army’s Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware division, which runs an anti-trafficking center on Kensington Avenue that serves about 50 women a day. The center provides meals, bathroom and shower facilities, counseling, and safety planning, as well as referrals for housing and drug treatment.

The people most vulnerable to trafficking are often unwilling or unable to go to police, she said. Many, like the women in Jones’ case, struggle with addiction. And some don’t see themselves as victims, she said, because police, courts, and child-welfare officials often treat them as offenders.

Kelly Devlin, the Salvation Army’s social services director in Philadelphia, said the case of the missing women in Olney, and Horsch’s seeming ability to control women with access to drugs, fits a similar model.

“We’re all talking about it, right? But nobody has said this could potentially lead to human trafficking survivors,” Devlin said of the Olney case. “And I think that’s important that, at some point, somebody name that what happened to these women was brutal, but it was also a part of human trafficking in Philly.”

Wynkoop said human trafficking happens “anywhere addiction issues are known and ignored.”

“As long as these issues continue to fly under the radar — as long as people who suffer from addiction are forced to live in the shadows — people will continue to exploit and profit off their addiction. They’ll continue to exploit and profit off their pain.”

He added: “That was what ‘the Girlfriend Experience’ was, and it seems like maybe the situation in Olney is no different. It seems like it was about the exploitation of women’s suffering.”

I report on the people, policies, and institutions that shape Philadelphia’s criminal justice system and the lives it touches. Ellie RushingEmailXInstagramBlueskyI cover criminal justice issues and law enforcement in Philadelphia, including how crime and the court systems impact communities. Pennsylvania PoliticsFormer President Barack Obama endorses Gov. Josh Shapiro for reelectionShapiro has been an outspoken supporter of Obama for nearly two decades. The former president called Shapiro "a friend" and "one of my earliest supporters" in the endorsement video posted to YouTube.

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