The Dumb Criminal archive is a rich one. There’s the murder plot that was foiled when the mastermind butt-dialed his intended victim, the man who burglarized some 15 houses while wearing a court-mandated G.P.S. tracker on his ankle, and now, the Beverly Hills pimp who left a manuscript of his crime-addled autobiography on his laptop.
Among Taquarius Ford’s habits, claim prosecutors, according to Vocativ: taking photos with Rihanna, Justin Bieber and other celebrities, drafting unsuspecting shopping-mall customers into prostitution, and, allegedly raping an 18-year-old girl who refused to join his escort service. He also appears to have found time for a nonprofit—which was supposed to fight sex trafficking.
The 34-year-old Ford is currently in prison in Portland, where a federal grand jury has indicted him on conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion.
In his memoir (working title: Denial of a Pimp), Ford describes how he conscripted women into his escort business. “I was never one of those guys who went to strip clubs or night clubs to knock a girl,” he writes. “I like playing small rural cities with small populations. I usually hit places like the Mall, Wal-Mart’s [sic] and Fast Food joints.”
“I buy so many condoms because each condom represents $300,” he writes in the book’s first chapter. “See the girls that I work with charge $300 plus per hour and since I am a man of safety and disease control, and well I’m also a man of class and fine taste. For every 40 pack of condoms that my girl goes through, that’s $12,000 dollars per box.”
Ford, also details why he would demand escorts tattoo his name on their bodies, and how he mentors younger pimps. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he counts Craigslist founder Craig Newmark among his heroes, noting that Newmark made millions of dollars off of adult ads posted to the Web site. Critics have long criticized sites like Craigslist and Village Voice Media’s Backpage as havens for pimps and sex traffickers.
Vocativ has published a run-down of the most offensive passages in the memoir, along with the entire document as submitted into the case as evidence. After Ford begged to be released on bail, on account of his being “a good individual” and having grown up “in the church,” the judge responded briskly: “Frankly, Mr. Ford, your word doesn’t mean much to me.”
