SEATTLE: "A King County jury has found Seattle hip-hop artist Solomon “Raz” Simone liable for criminal profiteering, awarding four women $2.1 million in a civil case. The verdict was issued Friday following a month long trial. But it has been nearly five years since the civil complaint was first filed, alleging Simone had groomed, trafficked and sexually assaulted multiple women across several states over the previous decade. The women said Simone forced them to engage in sex work while collecting their earnings with a daily quota and kept them in a tight system of isolation and control, from dictating their clothes and eating to at times confining them for days in narrow sleeping pods in Seattle.
Simone was never charged with trafficking. However, an investigation by The Times and KUOW in 2022 revealed that Seattle police had been aware of serious allegations against Simone and his music label, Black Umbrella, for years. The news organizations found that allegations of trafficking, assault and rape had been reported to the Seattle Police Department since 2017, with at least eight people, six women and the parents of two others, alleging Simone entangled women in a multistate sex trafficking scheme with crimes dating back to at least 2012.
Simone is a Seattle musician and was a prominent figure in the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, known as CHOP, during the racial protests in summer 2020.
An FBI investigation into Simone is believed to be ongoing."
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/raz-simone-verdict-in-seattle-women-awarded-2-1m-in-criminal-profiteering-case/