OAKLAND — The last time Michael Lavell Simon III was convicted of a crime related to sex trafficking, he served just one day in jail through a plea deal with Alameda County prosecutors.
This time, Simon will spend eight years in federal prison. He pleaded no contes to human trafficking and both the defense and prosecution agreed on the sentence, which was approved by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers at an Oct. 1 court hearing, records show.
But before the sentencing went through, the 38-year-old father of two daughters penned a letter to the court to demonstrate his remorse.
“I hurt someone else’s daughter. And I have to live with that and I feel bad for that father that can’t be there for his daughter that I put through so much agony,” Simon wrote in a pen and paper note submitted to Gonzalez Rogers. “I hope you can see that I am being real from the heart because under the tough shell I am a good man with a beautiful heart, a caring person, that messed up trying to provide for my family in the wrong way.”
Federal prosecutors weren’t so moved. They described Simon as a repeat offender who was not just caught trafficking adult women — who complained in text messages of beatings he allegedly gave them — but also possessed a video of a 17-year-old girl being sexually abused.
A federal agent identified Simon as the man in the video, based solely on familiarity with his voice, which the agent compared to hours of his phone calls from Santa Rita Jail, according to the criminal complaint.
Simon was charged last May with possessing child pornography but that charge was dropped in favor of the trafficking case, court records show.
In 2022, Simon pleaded no contest to pandering in Oakland, and received a two-year probation term along with a one-day jail sentence. The next year, federal and state authorities opened an investigation into him when a then-20-year-old woman called 911 in Oakland to report that she was hiding from her pimp near 10th Avenue and 10th Street and wanted to escape. Police identified her alleged exploiter as Simon and tracked him to the Value Inn on MacArthur Boulevard in Oakland, according to court records.
Later, authorities found text messages between Simon and an adult sex worker where she wrote, “All you do is make fun of me ignore me and beat me I go outside and make money you … scream in my ear,” according to a prosecution sentencing memo.
Looking back, Simon wrote, “I feel sick and disgusted with myself.”
“I’m very scared for (my daughters) to see their father in this light. And how they are going to feel,” he wrote. “I’m praying that they forgive me, and that the victims in this case can forgive me for abusing their trust in me. I manipulated the victims’ feelings and emotions to make money.”
He added that he “didn’t see the hurt/harm I was causing because of the drugs.”