{"id":509688,"date":"2026-10-27T17:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T17:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/509688\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T17:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T17:08:09","slug":"i-hurt-someone-elses-daughter-before-8-year-prison-sentence-oakland-pimp-pens-a-letter-of-apology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/509688\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I hurt someone else’s daughter’: Before 8-year prison sentence, Oakland pimp pens a letter of apology"},"content":{"rendered":"

OAKLAND \u2014 The last time Michael Lavell Simon III was convicted of a crime related to sex trafficking<\/a>, he served just one day in jail through a plea deal with Alameda County prosecutors.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But before the sentencing went through, the 38-year-old father of two daughters penned a letter to the court to demonstrate his remorse.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hurt someone else\u2019s daughter. And I have to live with that and I feel bad for that father that can\u2019t be there for his daughter that I put through so much agony,\u201d Simon wrote in a pen and paper note submitted to Gonzalez Rogers. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors weren\u2019t so moved. They described Simon as a repeat offender who was not just caught trafficking adult women \u2014 who complained in text messages of beatings he allegedly gave them \u2014 but also possessed a video of a 17-year-old girl being sexually abused.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Simon was charged last May with possessing child pornography but that charge was dropped in favor of the trafficking case, court records show.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Later, authorities found text messages between Simon and an adult sex worker where she wrote, \u201cAll you do is make fun of me ignore me and beat me I go outside and make money you \u2026 scream in my ear,\u201d according to a prosecution sentencing memo.<\/p>\n

Looking back, Simon wrote, \u201cI feel sick and disgusted with myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very scared for (my daughters) to see their father in this light. And how they are going to feel,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI\u2019m 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\u2019 feelings and emotions to make money.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that he \u201cdidn\u2019t see the hurt\/harm I was causing because of the drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OAKLAND \u2014 The last time Michael Lavell Simon III was convicted of a crime related to sex trafficking,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[861,862,143,145,12905,144,43351,12906,14347],"class_list":["post-509688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-bay-area-crime","tag-california-crime","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-human-trafficking","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-pimp","tag-oakland-prostitution","tag-oakland-sex-trafficking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}