Inside LA’s most vile gang accused of branding women and kidnapping 14-year-old girls for sex

Los Angeles pimps used “horrific” acts of cruelty to keep a vicelike grip on a sleazy stretch of south LA road where perverts can buy sex with children, and women turn tricks for as little as $40, cops and prosecutors said.

Vile flesh peddlers maintain a thriving sex business on LA’s Figueroa Corridor by branding prostitutes, recruiting girls from foster homes, forcing them to get abortions, and even biting and punching them with Rolex watches, authorities said.

The sickening sex trade secrets of the infamous Hoover Criminals gang’s brutal prostitution ring were revealed in a massive takedown of the Hoovers that saw the arrest of at least ten prostitution kingpins operating the in Figueroa, an area known to locals as “the Blade.”

“This is how they accomplish the sex trafficking in Figueroa,” explained LA’s top prosecutor Bill Essayli after Wednesday’s takedown, dubbed Operation Broken Blade.

“They do it first through coercion, and then through violence.”

“It’s horrific,” he added.

The Hoover Criminals, which originated in the late 1960s and early ’70s, are one of the largest and most powerful street gangs in Los Angeles.

After breaking away from the Crips, the gang flourished in the ’80s during the crack epidemic and expanded into several various criminal enterprises, including narcotics and prostitution.

They are infamous for operating under an “everybody killer” (EBK) mentality, which means they brawl with both the Bloods and the Crips.

The Hoovers operate a massive sex ring around infamous Corridor, authorities said, controlling women and young girls they force to walk sidewalks and attract johns, and then turn them in to seedy motels, where sex is sold for a cut to the front desk.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said the Hoover gang recruits victims who “have no one left to protect them,” and they do it to girls who are as young as possible.

“They lure young children with promises of money, expensive clothes, affection, and a place to sleep,” said McDonnell.

“Then they trap them through violence, intimidation, addiction, and fear.”

Many victims come from broken homes, the chief said, and Hoovers often recruit from foster homes. Pimps arrested in Wednesday’s takedown trafficked in girls as young as 14, according to court documents.

Once those victims are under the control of merciless pimps, the alleged sex kingpins keep them trapped in a cycle of exploitation through relentless physical and mental abuse, authorities said.

According to court papers, an alleged Hoover pimp named Cameron Lockett beat his victims and even “bit of a chunk” of one girl’s cheek so that she required stitches.

Lockett gave the girl a Percocet and sent her to the emergency room, taking a picture of the wound and texting it to a fellow Hoover gangster named Jared Evans, court papers said.

Essayli said the gash “went down to the cartilage.”

The flesh peddlers exercised psychological control over their victims by branding them with their names, according to prosecutors.

One accused Hoover madame named Amaya Armstead, known on the streets as “Lady Duck,” had her nickname tattooed on the backside of several of her victims, photos displayed by authorities showed.

“That’s one of the methods of coercion and force,” said Eddy Wang, Special Agent in Charge for Homeland Security Investigations Los Angeles, who was one of the lead agents on the case. 

“They’re branding them as their property,” said Wang. “That they are the sole individual that is able to profit from them.”

Such was the Hoovers’ control of their victims that an alleged pimp named Caleed Mouton could compel one of his girls to obtain an abortion, “warning her that after the procedure she would be bleeding,” according to court papers.

After the 16-year-old girl had the procedure, Mouton then “ordered her to engage in commercial sex work the same day and threatened to fire her if she did not,” charging documents state.  

Essayli said that 25 sex traffickers have been arrested and charged as a result of Operation Broken Blade, including Lockett, Armstead and Mouton, with more arrests to come.

“We’ve identified over 50 victims as part of this conspiracy, and our work keeps going,” said Essayli. “We’re not gonna stop.”