NEW YORK – Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Michael Jeffries and two other men have been arrested on charges of sex trafficking and interstate prostitution, a spokesman for federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Details of the criminal charges were not immediately available. They come after years of sexual misconduct allegations, made in civil lawsuits and in the media, from young people who said Jeffries lured them with promises of modeling work and then forced them to perform sex acts.

Jeffries’ attorney, Brian Bieber, said by email that he would “respond in detail to the allegations after the indictment is unsealed, and as appropriate, but that he intends to do so in the courthouse – not in the media .”

Information about attorneys for the other defendants was not immediately available.

Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney Breon Peace and FBI and police officials were scheduled to hold a news conference later Tuesday.

Jeffries became CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch in 1992 and left in 2014. The New Albany, Ohio-based company declined to comment on his arrest.

In a lawsuit filed last year in New York, Abercrombie was accused of allowing Jeffries to run a sex trafficking organization during his 22-year tenure. It said Jeffries had model scouts who scoured the Internet for victims, and that some potential models became victims of sex trafficking.

Abercrombie said last year it had hired an outside law firm to conduct an independent investigation after the BBC aired a report on similar allegations.

The BBC investigation involved a dozen men who described attending events involving sex acts that they said were organized by Jeffries and his partner, Matthew Smith, often at his New York home and hotels in London, Paris and elsewhere.

When the lawsuit was filed in New York last year, Bieber declined to comment on the allegations.

Abercrombie & Fitch traces its roots to a hunting and outdoors store founded in 1892. By the time Jeffries arrived a century later, the brand was also a retail business.

He was credited with transforming it into a darling of turn-of-the-millennium teen shopping culture, known for its nouveau-preppy aesthetic – and for some controversy surrounding it. Jeffries alienated some customers by talking about how the company started looking for attractive children who could fit into their clothes.

After the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession, A&F’s popularity began to fade again. By the time Jeffries left, a hedge fund had pushed the company’s board to replace him because of the company’s lagging performance.

But in recent years the company has recovered.