Pimp who was groomed as a teen gets 10 years

“All of this seemed normal to me and glamorized. And I wanted a relationship with my father.” NAJEE MOORE “I gave in and tried to be his player buddy and pimp mentor instead of (a) good firm strong father.” DAVID MOORE, FATHER OF NAJEE MOORE

How does a young man become a pimp? For Najee Moore, the answer lies with his father.

Before he was sentenced recently to 10 years in prison, Moore wrote a letter to U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman detailing his descent into the lifestyle.

Moore’s father — who once sent Moore a letter from jail directing him to be his father’s “eyes and ears” while maintaining his pimping enterprise — also wrote to the judge, echoing what Moore described.

“I felt guilty about being in prison most of his life, so I gave in and tried to be his player buddy and pimp mentor instead of (a) good firm strong father,” his father wrote. “I took the wrong methods with him and messed up the boy’s life . ... I am the one who failed him.”

Three years ago, Moore and his father became the second such father-and-son pimping operation to face federal indictment in Milwaukee.

High-profile court cases here have revealed generations of pimps and a group of traffickers — some of whom prostituted dozens of women — who regularly participated in “pimp roundtables,” during which they discussed their practices.

It’s notoriously difficult to collect data about

sex trafficking, but experts estimate there have been hundreds of victims in Milwaukee. Some survivors have shared their experiences publicly, including a former victim of Moore’s known as “J,” who spoke to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2015 and described a prolonged period of abuse, assault, manipulation and prostitution.

In his letter, Moore, who is now 26, wrote how his parents exposed him to sex-trafficking at a young age.

His mother danced at clubs, sometimes taking Moore with her. His father recruited women to work as prostitutes for him, and Moore had sex with one of them when he was 13, according to Moore’s letter.

That same year, he wrote, he met Derrick Avery, who had gained fame in movies and on television as “Pimp Snooky.” Avery later was convicted of trafficking scores of women and girls in cities from Milwaukee to Las Vegas for at least 16 years.

Avery is currently serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison.

“All of this seemed normal to me and glamorized,” Moore wrote. “And I wanted a relationship with my father, even though it led me down a wrong path.”

“This was my childhood memories, upbringing and experiences, like layers of bricks constructing a house, a foundation,” he continued.

He said he hit a “rough patch” with his mother at age 17 and that’s when his father influenced him to prostitute his 16-year-old girlfriend, one of the offenses he was charged with by prosecutors.

Moore, who entered into an agreement with prosecutors, knew he likely would be sentenced to 10 years in prison. He said he was “not a monster” and had accepted responsibility and wanted to pay his debt to society.

In a letter to the judge, his father said he had not been in contact with Moore and asked the judge to tell Moore he was “sorry for putting this garbage into his life.”

His father, David Moore, 48, also known as “King David,” pleaded guilty last year to two charges related to sex trafficking and is expected to be sentenced in March.

A third man, Paul Carter, 46, known as “Pimpin’ Paul,” pleaded guilty last month to eight federal sex trafficking charges and also has a scheduled sentencing hearing in March.

Carter was close with David Moore, who once suggested a logo for Carter — two capital P’s backto-back that represented Carter’s nickname — and the two men discussed which witnesses might be cooperating with federal investigators and how to prevent those witnesses from coming forward, according to court documents.

The three men are the latest in a string of Milwaukee pimps convicted of felonies in recent years. In his letter to the judge, Najee Moore wrote he had not known anyone to be imprisoned for that type of criminal activity.

“I do not use my upbringing as an excuse,” he wrote. “I do not ignore or minimize my own conduct. But things are not as black and white as they are made out to be . ... There is an explanation as to why and how I have ended up in the predicament I am in.”