Hammond Man Gets Life For Pimping, Violence
HAMMOND, Ind. (STMW) - A Hammond man was sentenced Monday to life in federal prison, more than a year after he was convicted on 22 counts of prostituting women and girls, sometimes by drugging and beating them.
As he handed down the sentence against c, U.S. District Judge Rudy Lozano said the case was one of the most disturbing he has seen during his 27 years on the bench.
Cephus and two co-defendants were found guilty last year of running a prostitution ring from a residence in Hammond. Cephus was convicted of being a violent pimp who would recruit teenage girls by passing out business cards for a supposed modeling agency at the River Oaks Mall in Calumet City, Ill.
The telephone number on the business cards was the same as one in a Yellow Pages listing for Beauty Escorts, an alleged call-girl service raided by Cook County sheriff's police and the FBI following a sting operation in Lansing, Ill.
The women--some of them, girls as young as 16--were given drugs, clothes and other items to get them to see clients. The women testified during trial that when they misbehaved, even when answering the phone wrong, Cephus and the other men would beat them.
Cephus asked the judge for leniency, saying he had been studying the Bible since being arrested and regretted his actions.
"I apologize for the silly stupidity of being a child, but sometimes we have to go through things to grow up," he said, citing growing up in a broken home.
(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire © Chicago Sun-Times 2010. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Defense attorney Visvaldis Kupsis argued for a 30- to 40-year sentence, saying what Cephus did was horrible but he wasn't a murderer.
Just because none of the women died, doesn't mean their lives weren't destroyed, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jill Trumbull Harris said.
