Flower Mound house involved in sex-trafficking ring

A Flower Mound house was involved in a sex-trafficking ring that operated out of Dallas and Fort Worth, according to police.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram recently published a news story after reviewing documents related to the arrest of an alleged pimp. The story says four houses in North Texas were used, including one in the 2600 block of Timberline Drive in Flower Mound.

Flower Mound Police Department Capt. Wess Griffin said the department started getting complaints about a year ago that there were a lot of women at the house, which was being rented, and neighbors were suspicious.

“We went there and found several women,” Griffin said. “We separated them, interviewed them individually and they all individually said they were just living together, that there was no sex trafficking or narcotics. They all vehemently denied anything going on of illegal nature.”

Griffin said police believed more was going on than the women were saying, “but when all of them individually denied it, there’s no basis for a probable cause search.”

Griffin said police kept an eye on the house and talked to the HOA and the owner of the house.

“That pressure seemed to have prompted them to move out of town about seven months ago,” Griffin said.

Griffin said FMPD could not find offenses being made in Flower Mound — in other words, “it wasn’t a brothel” — but rather the people involved were receiving phone calls and then going to the clients’ locations outside Flower Mound.

According to the Star-Telegram report, the larger investigation started in April, when a woman was shot inside a house in Oak Cliff. The next day, she told police about the prostitution ring that was being run out of the home.

“We had over 60 pages of investigative notes on that case,” Griffin said, and after that shooting, “we shared all of our information with Dallas and Fort Worth police.”

“Macknificent” Tremont Blakemore was arrested five months later after he moved his operation to a wealthy neighborhood in Fort Worth, according to the Star-Telegram. Blakemore — who has allegedly controlled upward of 100 women in his trafficking ring — was charged with aggravated promotion of prostitution, engaging in organized criminal activity and compelling prostitution by force, threat or fraud.