March 18, 2026Updated March 19, 2026, 12:11 p.m. ET
Burton ― An undercover Genesee County Sheriff’s deputy sits inside a McDonald’s alone, her hoodie pulled up, eating an Oreo cookie McFlurry and waiting for her “date.”
For several hours, the deputy and her colleagues on the Genesee Human Oppression Strike Team, known as GHOST, have been communicating with multiple potential suitors responding to their fake online ads for sex.
This Tuesday afternoon in December, it’s her colleague, Lt. Andrew Snyder, who has found a taker.
And the perpetrator is about to find out his rendezvous isn’t with a 15-year-old girl — it’s with law enforcement.
“We have a gentleman that is interested in meeting us, so we’re gonna try to meet him and place him under arrest,” Snyder says as the team packs up.
The so-called “reverse sting” represents an aggressive and, to some, controversial new approach by law enforcement and prosecutors to stop human trafficking by targeting johns, or buyers of sex.
Critics call it entrapment. Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson and others call it a proactive approach to combating a crime that state officials say has touched all 83 counties in Michigan and is driven by traffickers who operate online with impunity.
“We needed to create a proactive team to go find predators before they actually act out and destroy people’s lives,” said Swanson, who formed GHOST in 2018. “Once you arrest a predator and identify them, you’re saving the lives of 25 future victims.”
Prosecutors across Michigan have joined the new approach to end human trafficking by busting sex buyers to reduce demand and are developing a statewide public education campaign to prevent potential victims, including children, from being swept into forced sex and labor work.
Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said authorities for too long have “essentially looked the other way” when it comes to buyers of sex.
“We’ve learned a lot of things about trafficking … we’ve learned how to stop it and how to prevent it, and part of that is holding the individuals accountable who seek out and pay traffickers for sexual acts,” McDonald said. “… We now know it is the wrong thing to do, and a key part of preventing trafficking is to hold those individuals accountable.”
Melissa Palepu, who specializes in human trafficking and child abuse prosecutions for the Michigan Attorney General’s office, said her biggest concern is that Michigan is not educating young people about how to protect themselves from human traffickers online.
“Because our schools don’t teach it,” Palepu said. “They don’t want to talk about human trafficking. And so our kids, our kids are so vulnerable because we don’t give them any defenses. And then also, our parents are vulnerable because they also don’t know.”
The Michigan Human Trafficking Commission, which Palepu chairs, has set its 2026-27 priorities as creating a public education campaign and creating a K-12 school curriculum for human trafficking in Michigan.
“Social media and online access to our children is completely out of control,” Palepu told The News. “Our kids are just walking targets at this moment. Every app that they have is just another resource for a trafficker to come in and talk with them.”
How a sting unfolds in real time
Human trafficking is the exploitation of another person for commercial sexual activity or labor by force, fraud or coercion. Often referred to as a form of modern-day slavery, it has eluded law enforcement for decades because of its complex, highly adaptive nature, with traffickers operating online recruiting and selling victims, both female and male.
So police have changed their approach to target demand — interrupting the cycle of traffickers and johns who search online for vulnerable underage girls to have sex.
Swanson’s investigators on the GHOST team initially contacted trafficked victims and set up dates as sex buyers on websites known for trafficking. They would take the victims into custody and offer them support services and a way out of trafficking rather than prosecution. Police say being sex trafficked is not prostitution, which can be a consensual act between adults, although also illegal.
“We ask them the questions that we ask all of our victims: Are you forced to do this? Do you keep your own money? Is there anybody that you have to report to?” said Lt. Rudy Lopez, a GHOST team leader.
After the pandemic began, the GHOST team saw a massive increase in predators online and shifted its approach to posing as underage girls selling sex online and snagging suspects shopping for sex and in the business of recruiting victims for trafficking.
“We’ve learned how to put it out there to where these guys are,” said Lt. Ryan Dobbs, another GHOST leader. “We give them every out. We give them the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, you’re 14. What are you doing?’ and either end the conversation or call the police. But none of them do.”
Since 2018, GHOST has conducted 137 operations, arrested more than 270 suspects and rescued 88 children, Swanson said. These operations include direct rescues of trafficking victims and reverse stings.
During a visit by The News to the team’s headquarters in December, it didn’t take long for deputies to find a sex shopper looking for what he thought was a 15-year-old girl.
GHOST team members started the day in the office, acting as decoys online and texting with multiple potential suitors responding to ads for sex on what is considered the dark web. The team, men and women with families of their own, receives around 20 responses per hour per ad, with some chats lasting up to eight hours.
On a Tuesday afternoon in December, Lt. Snyder, the Genesee deputy, found a taker for the ad he placed that day, which includes stock photos and is titled “Tues-Yay just got a little bit funner” with a kiss mark emoji.
After arranging the meeting at the McDonald’s in Burton, the team waited in undercover vehicles, communicating via radio, and Snyder continued the chat with the suspect from his own vehicle. The decoy, a female deputy, remained inside the restaurant.
The suspect arrived in a black Ford Bronco and stepped out of the car. Weapons drawn, officers swooped in and announced an arrest before the man could get anywhere near the officer. Officers found two guns, a box of condoms, a large amount of cash and a smartphone inside the suspect’s vehicle.
A legal challenge: ‘Creating … fictional crimes’
The reverse sting technique, which has been underway in at least 64 Michigan counties since Swanson brought training teams there, is under review by the Michigan Supreme Court over complaints that the stings constitute entrapment.
The specific case involves a soliciting incident in Paw Paw, in southwest Michigan, in April 2022. The incident occurred while the GHOST unit was training Van Buren County deputies in conducting that type of sting operation.
In the case under review, Jayneel Jade went onto an adult escort website that required users to be 19 or older — but has no age verification — and responded to an ad placed by a woman who purported to be 20, but was actually a sheriff’s department decoy.
In the texts, the decoy said she was actually 15. When Jade insisted she had to be 16, the decoy again responded she was 15. Jade later claimed he researched the decoy’s phone number and found it belonged to a 34-year-old woman.
“I’m cool if you are older than 15 and want to role play to be 15,” Jade texted, according to a court transcript. “Sorry I’m Actually 15. Like real life lol,” the decoy texted back.
The defendant proposed going out to eat with her, and in response, the decoy again brought up exchanging sex for money. Jade spoke to the decoy over the phone and agreed to meet her in a hotel room, where he was immediately arrested. He pleaded guilty to accosting a child for immoral purposes. He appealed, arguing that officers entrapped him with a bait-and-switch sex sting.
Prosecutors have argued, and lower courts have affirmed, that law enforcement actions in the case and others fell short of entrapment because police merely created an opportunity for a crime, and the defendant took advantage of that opportunity.
But Tim Doman, the appellate attorney representing Jade, says his client and others like him were seeking consensual encounters with an adult, and he found no evidence that they would have committed these crimes without police involvement.
“If they had targeted some of these dark websites or chat rooms, where it’s kind of known and expected that certain people are going on these websites looking to solicit sex with children, I think those would be proper sting operations,” Doman said. “Because in those cases, you’re actively looking for suspects seeking sex with a child. But that’s not what happened here.”
In an amicus brief filed by the Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan, the association argued that the sting operations are “inducing crimes.”
“Whether the police are ensnaring innocent people through remarkable levels of deceit and trickery by representing themselves as adults and never fully rebutting that inference, or actively grooming and encouraging people who were planning to have sex with an adult to have sex with a minor instead, these sting operations are inducing crimes by those not independently set on committing them,” the brief said. “That is entrapment.”
Swanson, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, denies that the approach is entrapment and says he has worked with prosecutors to ensure the tactic remains lawful. He makes no secret that his team is conducting these operations and often posts on social media about the arrests soon after they happen.
“I met with the prosecutor, and we trained at making sure we didn’t use entrapment tactics, that our arrests were sustainable under the variables of the crime,” Swanson said. “We didn’t want to lose any of these individuals if they came to a sting.”
Swanson says he measures success in the number of victims his team saves from trafficking and the prevention of future victims. Lopez, the GHOST team leader, says the approach is working and that buyers of sex are aware of their crackdown.
When the operational shift to buyers first started around 2020, Lopez said the team got seven or eight buyers a night and had to stop because they ran out of team members to act as interviewers. Now, “we’re lucky to get one or two.”
A crime that thrives on grooming
Human trafficking has touched every county in Michigan. In 2024, the National Human Trafficking Hotline received 764 tips, resulting in 340 confirmed cases and 585 identified victims.
It is a crime often orchestrated by trusted people who know how to manipulate, groom and exploit a vulnerable person, experts agree. It’s how it not only survives but thrives: quietly, invisibly and close to home.
Experts believe human trafficking is a growing criminal industry around the world and in the United States that often goes hand in hand with drug trafficking.
Bridgette Carr, a clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan and the founding director of the Law School’s Human Trafficking Clinic, said cohesive statistics are not available for human trafficking because law enforcement agencies approach it differently. Reports of spikes in human trafficking during major events like the Super Bowl are the result of increased law enforcement presence looking for those cases, she said.
Carr, who has worked on cases involving the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, said approaches to combating the crime still vary by jurisdiction in Michigan, with some police and prosecutors disagreeing over who is a victim and who is part of a criminal enterprise.
A victim of trafficking might be a witness in a federal case and at the same time a suspect in a criminal case charged by a local prosecutor, said Carr. She advocates for an approach that is based on a broader, more holistic understanding of the crime.
“As a society, we don’t like ambiguity, and there’s … lots of unknowns,” Carr said of human trafficking. “The things that are known: if drugs are sold in your community, human beings are likely as well. I’ve never seen a community that somehow has figured out how to eliminate this type of exploitation.”
In the last five years, Michigan has ranked in the top 10 in the nation in the number of human trafficking “signals,” or tips called into a national hotline, alongside states such as California, Texas, Florida, and New York. The rankings come from Polaris, an anti-trafficking organization that operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline; the FBI, State Department and Homeland Security; and the Human Trafficking Institute.
In Michigan, victims have been trafficked in Grand Rapids, Port Huron, the Upper Peninsula, Metro Detroit and small towns like Wayland, Greenville and Dundee. Experts say victims are often lured through someone they know, and in many cases, someone in their own family did the trafficking.
Carr says the priority in addressing trafficking should be to stop arresting victims. Next, society must stop treating trafficking as someone else’s problem, she said. For trafficking to happen, you need someone with a vulnerability and someone with power, she said.
Law enforcement, lawmakers look to toughen penalties
Across Michigan’s 83 counties, police and prosecutors have spent the last several years increasing training on human trafficking to understand its complexities and how people become victims. A majority of counties have a unit, a task force or a team examining the crime.
Michigan lawmakers are pushing for tougher penalties for traffickers, including potential life in prison. Currently, Michigan law sets the maximum penalty at 20 years in prison.
State Sen. John Damoose, R-Harbor Springs, one of the lead sponsors of the package, said no law can single-handedly eliminate human trafficking.
“It’s already illegal, yet new victims are still ensnared every single day,” Damoose said after the bill’s Senate passage. “And the message is especially clear related to our children. If you traffic a child in Michigan, you will be at risk of spending the rest of your life in prison.”
McDonald, the Democratic Oakland County prosecutor running for Attorney General, established the first human trafficking unit within the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office in 2024 and, last fall, used county commission funds to hire additional staff, creating a team of five lawyers, two investigators, and two paralegals.
Once the unit was formed, a countywide Human Trafficking Task Force was created under Sheriff Michael Bouchard. McDonald said it became clear that more training was necessary, so she hosted a session in Oakland County with 300 law enforcement officials from across the county.
In December, McDonald declared that her office was shifting its approach to human trafficking cases by focusing on the people purchasing commercial sex work in an effort to reduce demand for it and make it hard for traffickers to operate. Her specialized human trafficking unit has reported 40 charged cases and prosecutions since the 2024 training.
In an interview with The News, McDonald said the public likes to talk about the Epstein cases and files, focusing on wealth and exotic locations. But the same crimes are going down in hotel rooms in Southfield, she noted.
“It is the same. Those young women were picked out, vulnerable, and suddenly they’re being trafficked,” McDonald said.
McDonald’s goal is to prosecute human traffickers and secure sentences that will prevent them from victimizing more women. Another goal, her office said, is to identify and permanently shutter the dozens of illegal massage businesses operating in Oakland County.
“There is no single measure of success,” McDonald said. “One measure of success, for me, is educating stakeholders and the public about the need for resources, law enforcement support and advocacy similar to what exists for domestic violence victims. The most important number for us is the number of victims we assist, and the number of future victims we prevent.”
A survivor works to help others
One Michigan survivor of human trafficking is working with federal authorities to help them understand how traffickers operate and how they infiltrate communities and families.
Lauren Sowell told The News she was trafficked starting at the age of 14 in Highland Park. She only escaped four years later when her trafficker was killed in a drive-by shooting.
Sowell, now 33, recalled how she went from being a straight-A student and attending church daily with her three sisters and Baptist foster grandparents in Detroit to running away from home and into the hands of a sex trafficker in Highland Park.
“I was 14, he offered me money, compared to a $5 allowance, like there was nothing on my radar that said, ‘Hey, this is so unsafe,'” Sowell told The News. “So I jumped in the car. I provided the sexual act, he gave me the large amount of money and said, ‘Do you want to go home with me, or you want to go home?’ I went straight with him.”
Sowell said her trafficker was a drug dealer who also used, and she became the payment.
“I no longer had an identity, no longer had the things that I needed anymore. He bought my underwear, he bought my bra. I didn’t have food to eat,” she said.
Her reality was that no one was looking for her, either.
“I was 18 when I called my foster grandparents from a treatment center and let them know that I was even in a treatment center. No one was looking for me,” Sowell said. “I graduated salutatorian in my high school, and no truancy officer ever went to my house and said, ‘Hey, she’s not being here every day.'”
Sowell is now a mother of two, an author and speaker, and leads a nonprofit. While the world and technology have drastically changed since Sowell was 14, traffickers have also adapted, too, such as targeting children through gaming system chats, she said.
“If you really add up how many passed (died) from trafficking versus how many were rescued and saved, Michigan has to do a better job,” Sowell said.
Education, awareness on the rise
Law enforcement agencies say they are working on improving their response — and collaborating more to share resources on human trafficking. Swanson says he has worked with 64 sheriffs in Michigan and in nine states to share his training.
Along with Genesee, task forces are operating in Monroe, Macomb and Oakland counties, as well as in Shiawasee, Oakland, Grand Traverse and Kalamazoo counties. Wayne County and Detroit participate in multi-agency efforts with the FBI and Michigan State Police.
Education on human trafficking and training on how to spot it also have increased in Metro Detroit, from public education sessions at local libraries on identifying signs of human trafficking in your community, to human trafficking education at Wayne State University to equip future nurses to recognize and respond to human trafficking and connect patients with lifesaving resources, to trainings for autoworkers inside auto plants.
The Polaris Project, a nonprofit victim advocate organization that works to end trafficking, reports that up to 88% of human trafficking victims had access to health care while they were being trafficked, yet 54% of those survivors who had access were not identified as being a victim of human trafficking while they sought treatment.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has warned that children are especially at risk. Many human trafficking cases involve the sexual exploitation of a child who meets a trafficker online, according to Nessel’s office.
Palepu, of the Michigan Attorney General’s office, said almost every single human trafficking case — especially those involving young people — involved social media and platforms.
“That’s how they communicate with each other, that’s how they communicate with their traffickers, that’s how their traffickers infiltrate their lives,” Palepu said.
Children and teens are recruited through chat rooms on apps like Discord and on platforms like Roblox. Chatting moves to a smartphone, where grooming and gifts begin, followed by sextortion, before they are put to sex work in communities across Michigan, experts said.
Police say it is incredibly easy for traffickers to gain personal information from potential victims due to what some of them “over-share” about their personal lives on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok and in chats.
Victims of trafficking are often unaware that what is happening to them is a crime and have no information on how to get out, Palepu said. That is especially true for children, who do not have the mental bandwidth to understand the manipulation and promises of a trafficker.
Education in K-12 schools on human trafficking is not mandatory, but last fall, the state Board of Education approved revised health education standards that include measures to raise students’ awareness of human trafficking and how to seek help.
The guidelines ask educators to define exploitation and human trafficking and to describe strategies and warning signs of exploitation and recruiting young people. It is up to each school district to implement the guidelines.
“I actually think the best way to solve this problem is through education. I think if you get to law enforcement, you’re already behind the ball,” Palepu said.
jchambers@detroitnews.com
How to recognize signs of human trafficking
Someone may be experiencing sex trafficking if they:
∎ Disclose that they were reluctant to engage in commercial sex but that someone pressured them into it.
∎ Live where they work or are transported by guards between home and workplace.
∎ Work in an industry where it may be common to be pressured into performing sex acts for money, such as a strip club, illicit cantina, go-go bar, or illicit massage business.
∎ Have a controlling parent, guardian, romantic partner, or “sponsor” who will not allow them to meet or speak with anyone alone or who monitors their movements, spending, or communications.
∎ Use a hand signal to ask for help that starts with an open hand, with the thumb tucked into the palm, and the fingers folded down over the thumb. Once the hand signal is seen, an individual can alert police by texting or dialing 911.
If you or someone you know is a victim of human trafficking in Michigan, confidential help is available 24/7 through the National Human Trafficking Hotline: Call 1 (888) 373-7888, text: 233733 or chat online using the National Human Trafficking Hotline website.
The Genesee County Sheriff’s Office offers a human trafficking certification program that teaches people how to spot, identify and report suspected cases. The training can be found at www.gcsomichigan.com/ghost
