Associated Press

Associated Press

SIOUX FALLS, S.D.

It was an anonymous two-story house with an outdoor side staircase, nothing that looked ominous to Kevin Koliner when he passed by going to and from work. On one evening stroll, the federal prosecutor heard loud noises but figured it was just a party. Later, he’d discover the ugly truth.

In a squalid second-floor apartment, just blocks from the U.S. attorney’s office, Mohammed Sharif Alaboudi ran a violent sex-trafficking ring, preying on young, troubled women. He plied them with drugs and alcohol, gave them clothes and a place to stay, and forced them to engage in sex acts with strangers. Prosecutors dubbed his place a “house of horrors.”

The case of Alaboudi, now serving four life terms, offers a glimpse into how the feds are waging an aggressive campaign to root out the illicit sex trade lurking in this seemingly unlikely locale: a low-crime state dotted with sleepy hamlets.

“We’re just a friendly state, and I think traffickers see this as a trusting place and think, ‘They’re never going to catch me. They’re not so bright,”’ says Jenise Pischel, program coordinator at Our Home Inc., a private nonprofit that has helped trafficked girls, including a 14-year-old in the Alaboudi case. “Well, we seem to be catching an awful lot of them.”

In recent years, the feds have pursued about 50 sex trafficking cases, three resulting in life sentences. Bolstered by state and local authorities, they’re also getting support from Native American tribes, church groups and the Junior League.

The cases have ranged from predator stings at the last three Sturgis motorcycle rallies to busts of lucrative businesses that have transported girls as young as 14 to cities around the Midwest. Police also have detected a circuit some traffickers travel that includes the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota.

Most traffickers have been transplants with criminal records; two serving life were reputed Chicago gang members. Customers, or those caught in stings, have ranged from a Texas air traffic controller nabbed at Sturgis after answering a bogus online ad offering sex with a 12-year-old (his sentence: 15 years) to a Lamborghini-driving local doctor who prescribed illegal Oxycodone to a trafficker (his punishment: 22 months.)

While trafficking exists around the nation, there’s something distinctive about South Dakota: About half the women in the federal cases have been Native American, a particularly vulnerable population.

A broad coalition is tackling the problem. Federal prosecutors have trained tribal law enforcement at all nine reservations on how to identify trafficking. Police have led workshops for motel workers. The Junior League has spoken about trafficking at schools, PTOs and 4-H clubs, financed billboards and prepared TV public service ads.

Though South Dakota has a pastoral image, police and prosecutors say its remoteness, pockets of poverty and highway system attract traffickers.

Some have migrated here “to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond,” says Brendan Johnson, former U.S attorney. “They found less competition than they would have in a larger community.”

It was Johnson, now in private practice, who began emphasizing the issue about five years ago, knowing convictions could bring stiff sentences. The federal mandatory minimum generally is 10 to 15 years.