Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries has been arrested on sex trafficking charges, a spokesman for federal prosecutors said.

Jeffries’ partner Matthew Smith and a third man James Jacobson have also been arrested on the same charges.

Jeffries and Smith were arrested in Florida and are scheduled to appear in court in West Palm Beach on Tuesday afternoon.

Jacobson was arrested in Wisconsin. There was no immediate information about a court appearance.

Abercrombie & Fitch declined to comment on Jeffries’ arrest.

At a news conference in New York, Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said Jeffries used his “power, his wealth and his influence to traffic men for his own and his romantic partner’s sexual pleasure.” , Mathew Smith”.

Mr. Peace said the indictment alleged that Jeffries and Smith employed Jacobson “to act as a recruiter to find men.”

Jacobson would participate in “tryouts with men around the world, where he would typically pay them to perform sexual acts on him.”

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Smith would then decide who would meet with him and Jeffries and the selected men would be flown to Jeffries and Smith’s homes or to hotels around the world “for the purpose of attending events to engage in commercial sex.”

Peace alleged that all three defendants “used force, fraud and coercion to traffic those men for their own sexual gratification.”

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It comes after several allegations of sexual misconduct, including a lawsuit filed in New York last year accusing Abercrombie of allowing Jeffries to run a sex trafficking organization during his 22-year tenure.

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

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

Jeffries left Abercrombie & Fitch in 2014.

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.