The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Alabama has a new award for the cops it works with, and the first one went to the man who put a real name on a predator hiding behind a fake teenage girl’s social media accounts.
U.S. Attorney Phil Williams presented the office’s first-ever Vanguard Award to Homeland Security Investigations Task Force Officer Marlon Cole for his work on the case of Trevon Lamont Brown, a 25-year-old from Ocala, Florida, who spent years sextorting boys and young men across Alabama and the country.
“Our awardee is indeed a Vanguard,” Williams said. “HSI-TFO Cole demonstrated the kind of persistence and dedication that this award was created to recognize. This child predator believed he could hide behind a screen, conceal his identity, and continue targeting young people. HSI-TFO Cole refused to let that happen.”
“Trevon Brown, the predator of so many, was sentenced to 50 years in prison,” Williams said. “Justice obtained in this case for all the victims would not have come to fruition if it wasn’t for the tenacity, dedication, and hard work of the person we are recognizing.”
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According to court documents, Brown started in December 2020 posing as a teenage girl on social media to reach males between 15 and 23. He sent explicit photos and videos of a female, asked for the same in return, then threatened to forward what he got to the victims’ friends and family unless they kept giving him what he demanded.
Agents searched Brown’s Ocala home on Aug. 2, 2023, and seized his devices. A forensic exam of his iPhones turned up child pornography and explicit images of many victims. The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency flagged three more victims in the Middle District of Alabama, and those cyberstalking charges were folded into the Birmingham case.
Brown pleaded guilty in December 2025 to sex trafficking, production of child pornography, coercion and enticement of a minor and cyberstalking. U.S. District Judge Corey L. Maze sentenced him April 30 to 600 months in federal prison followed by supervised release for life.
HSI Birmingham led the investigation with help from FBI Birmingham, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, ALEA and agencies in five other states.
The award’s name is not an accident. Williams is a retired Army colonel and Airborne Ranger with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, sworn in May 28 after President Donald Trump nominated the former state senator from Rainbow City and Rightside Radio host to lead Alabama’s largest federal district.
“The Vanguard are those individuals who go out forward of the main force to locate and fix the enemy, and to then lead the main effort as the forward force,” the office explained.
“Vanguards are carefully chosen, highly skilled, and incredibly effective individuals who are committed to the cause. To serve in the Vanguard is to serve as one of the few who will go the extra mile to defeat those who would dare perpetrate harm on our society.”
Catherine Crosby, who announced Brown’s sentence as acting U.S. attorney in April, stayed on as first assistant when Williams took over.
