Pimp Admits Bringing 2 Women from Long Beach to Vegas for Prostitution

A man who served about 11 years behind bars for pimping was sent back to federal prison today for sex trafficking.

William Earl Flavors, 41, pleaded guilty in December to one count of transportation into prostitution. Flavors went back to pimping soon after he was released from custody in his prior case, according to Thom Mrozek of the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Flavors admitted he brought two women in 2012 from Long Beach to Las Vegas to work as prostitutes, Mrozek said.

U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton accepted the 10-year sentence agreed upon in a plea bargain. The sentence will run consecutively with the four years Flavors must serve for violating his supervised release in the prior conviction, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brett Sagel said.

Flavors must serve at least 85 percent of his sentence, Sagel said.

Flavors drew criticism from Staton today for essentially blaming the judicial system for his falling back into his old ways after he was released from prison, Mrozek said.

In a letter to the judge, Flavors was apologetic and wrote wanted to accept responsibility for his crimes, but he also wrote he would have avoided trouble if he had been sent back to the Seattle area to be with family and friends.

"I am embarrassed, hurt and disappointed in myself for letting my family and friends down," Flavors said in the letter. "My mother is 61 years old. She had a major stroke in 2008 that paralyzed the left side of her body. She and I was looking forward for me to come home to Seattle and look after her, but that never happened ... ."

Flavors said he often appealed to serve his time in the Seattle area, but was rebuffed. When he was released from prison he said he had a "positive mind" and got a job as a salesman, but he lost his job when the economy slumped.

"While being without a job, my bills began to stack up on me, and with no family or friends to turn to for help I started stressing and (began) to drink a great deal of alcohol every day and hang with the wrong people," Flavors wrote.

The defendant said he was a "total idiot" and a "drunk and irresponsible loser" to go back to pimping, but said that if probation officials had sent him back to Washington, "I would not have been in this (predicament). I just feel like I was set up for failure and not given a fair chance by not being able to go home where I had support from family and friends..."

The judge was not sympathetic, Mrozek said.

Staton noted that "beating women and forcing them into prostitution is not a 'predicament,' but a choice -- a choice that defendant made."

Prosecutors said Flavors coerced a 19-year-old victim by "beating her with his fists and on one occasion burning her legs with a lit cigarette," according to court papers.

In May 2000, Flavors was sentenced to 14 years in prison for taking a 15- year-old girl and a 17-year-old girl from Washington and forcing them to work as prostitutes in Orange County, Mrozek said.

Flavors got out of prison in that case in 2011, but was back behind bars in October of 2012 when Long Beach police arrested him on suspicion of attacking a woman.

In the prior federal case, prosecutors said Flavors broke one victim's nose and beat another victim with clothes hangers and burned her with curling irons while also forcing her to drink cups of urine.

Flavors told the judge that when he is released from prison he would like to start a van service that provides rides to families and friends of inmates.

--City News Service