Man is jailed after forcing woman into prostitution in Miami Beach: police

A man manipulated, abused and coerced a woman into prostitution — taking all the money that she made for himself and beating her when she was unable to make any, according to Miami Beach police. He’s locked up and charged with human trafficking.

On Tuesday, human-trafficking detectives met with a woman who told them that Tarance Gould, 45, had been forcing her to do sex work since she met him in July 2025 in Atlantic City, N.J. At the time, the woman was living in her 2012 white Ford Fusion while working as a prostitute and making DoorDash deliveries to make ends meet, according to Gould’s arrest affidavit.

Police say Gould knew this when he approached her on the street. Two weeks after they met, he was arrested in Atlantic City on a charge of violating probation. Gould kept up with the woman via the jail’s landline, and she would deposit money into his commissary account during his two-month stint.

It was during this time that police say he groomed the 23-year-old woman into believing she was his girlfriend.

After his release from jail, he took control over the woman’s ID, car and cellphone and would not let her talk to her family, police say. To avoid suspicion, Gould made up a script and had her memorize it so they would both have the same story: They had been together for three years, and she was pregnant with his child.

At some point, the woman said Gould drove her to Miami Beach and forced her into prostitution there because she would make more money and he had associates there, police said.

While in Miami Beach, they mostly lived out of her car until it was repossessed.

Police say Gould once chased a man with a knife in Miami Beach after he attempted to intervene when he saw Gould verbally abuse the woman on a sidewalk and it seemed it would soon turn to physical violence.

Physical abuse was a common pattern for Gould, police say.

According to police:

Gould would have her go into casinos and have sex with men for money and steal from men.

Gould, who was unemployed, would take all the money that she earned from prostitution and DoorDash. She sometimes made $1,000 a day. He would also take nude photos of her and upload them to escort websites.

When the woman was unable to bring in money, he would beat her and call her names such as “fat” and “piggie,” telling her she was not a real woman because she could not take care of her man. He would force her to shoplift almost every day for food and panhandle when the car was out of gas while Gould slept.

“He would beat me all over my body,” she told detectives. Bruises were photographed by crime-scene photographers.

When the woman would threaten to call the cops, Gould would tell her that “she would be raped by the police and arrested for prostitution,” detectives wrote in his arrest affidavit. He would tell her that he had beat a human-trafficking case and that police had to apologize to him for arresting him.

Gould drove the woman through several states, including New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, according to police

Police said this is not the first time Gould has been arrested for human trafficking and called him a dangerous career criminal with multiple arrests in various states. He has been arrested 18 times in Miami Beach, police say.

Gould remains locked up at the Miami-Dade County Pre-Trial Detention Center as of Thursday.