A man who met a 17-year-old on MySpace and promised to make her a star by bringing her to Southern California was sentenced Thursday to 17-and-a-half years behind bars for pimping her and another underage girl, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. Authorities say that Washington, D.C. resident Dwayne Lawson, 29, pleaded guilty to child sex trafficking Thursday morning.

The case was cracked, in part, when Los Angeles Police Department officers arrested the 17-year-old on suspicion of prostitution and the case apparently led to Lawson, who had been pimping her after shipping her via bus ticket from Florida to Southern California.

He had her mainly work in Orange County, according to court documents. Another underage teen, whose age was not revealed, was also pimped by Lawson, federal authorities said. He drove her from Miami to O.C. so she could work the streets as well.

“The young people in this case were victimized and exploited in a horrific way,” said the U.S. Attorney in L.A. André Birotte Jr. “This sentence demonstrates that sex traffickers and pimps will suffer severe consequences for their reprehensible conduct.”

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