He’s been a lawyer for 35 years. Cops say he’s also a pimp and racketeer.
A Brevard County attorney got busted on his way to paid sex with an Orange County teenager 55 years younger, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office says.
But 71-year-old John Gillespie didn’t want the business relationship to remain customer-client, Moody’s office said. Gillespie wanted to transform the relationship to pimp-entrapped girl by taking her back to his home and making her a sex trafficking victim.
Gillespie sits in Orange County jail on charges of human trafficking of a minor, racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering and unlawful use of a two-way communication device. Also arrested and charged with the latter three crimes was Mark Featherman.
The AG’s office says an Orlando Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation look at Gillespie found that he kept girls at his Melbourne home and pimped them out via an escort website. He retained control over them by claiming they owed him money for drugs, legal fees or rent.
“These alleged actions insult all attorneys who have a passion to protect the defenseless or oppressed,“ Moody said in a statement. “His website states ‘Never been a prosecutor, always on the right side of the innocent.” Yet, he has been abusing innocent girls and I look forward to him meeting a real and ethical prosecutor from my Office of Statewide Prosecution in court very soon.”
Gillespie was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1985 and to the Florida Bar in 1998.
This story was originally published April 20, 2020 at 7:23 PM.
