The criminal complaint said law enforcement agencies, including the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, started investigating the operation in 2021. Officials found that a 57-year-old man had been operating the organization with assistance from Sampson, a 30-year-old woman and a 36-year-old woman.
Law enforcement learned through their investigation that the man and the 30-year-old woman were “actively involved in recruiting and posting commercial sex advertisements for numerous women,” set rates for appointments for “commercial sex transactions” and collected and received profits from the transactions, according to the court document.
The 36-year-old woman owned and operated the website Minnesota Erotica Personals, on which women have been “posted” for commercial sex transactions, the complaint said. She, along with the 30-year-old woman and the man, collected money from the victims posted on the website.
Sampson helped create and maintain corporations that appeared to be shell companies used to hide and/or funnel profits from the organization, according to the court document. Proceeds from the organization were allegedly collected and deposited into accounts before they were moved into bank accounts, including those of the corporations Sampson created.
Per the complaint, at least two Minneapolis properties owned by Sampson were sites where photographs of victims were taken for the advertisements and where transactions happened.
The court document, citing phone records, journal entries and other information gathered in the probe, said Sampson and the other two women appeared to believe they were in a romantic and/or sexual relationship with the man.