Fort Worth man gets more than 11 years in federal prison for sex trafficking minor

A 36-year-old Fort Worth man who admitted to sex trafficking a 13-year-old girl at an Irving hotel room was sentenced Wednesday to more than 11 years in federal prison.

Curtis Vance Mathis pleaded guilty to sex trafficking of children in June 2021. He was sentenced to 135 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade.

According to court documents, Mathis met the victim in October 2019 while she was walking to a gas station in Fort Worth.

He went on to post commercial sex ads for the girl online and drove her to commercial sex calls around the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Mathis told the girl what to charge customers, and the girl would give the profits to Mathis, court documents state.

After about 10 days of facilitating the commercial sex of the girl, the two got into an argument and the girl left Mathis. In early November, the girl was hospitalized with an illness and called Mathis to pick her up because she had nowhere to go when she was released, authorities wrote in court documents.

On Nov. 4, Mathis rented a hotel room at Arya Inn & Suites in Irving and placed advertisements for commercial sex with the girl. Multiple people engaged in commercial sex with the girl at the hotel after seeing the ads, court documetns state.

Two of the men who met with the girl at the hotel, Kention Obryan Johnson, 38, and Sergio Trinidad Carvajal, 33, were indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and sex trafficking of children in 2020. Their cases are pending, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas said.

Authorities saw the online advertisements featuring the girl and set up a meeting through an undercover officer. The girl had been reported missing at that point, according to court documents.

The girl was recovered at the hotel, and Mathis was arrested in December 2019.

Mathis admitted that he knew the girl was underage, court documents state.

In a written statement, Jesse Woods, assistant special agent in charge of Dallas homeland security investigations, said those who engage in commercial sex with minors “have no regard for human decency.”

“These predators are responsible for initiating a pattern of mental and physical abuse that is often hard for their victims to overcome,” he said. “Anyone who engages in this type of criminal behavior should know that HSI and its law enforcement partners of the North Texas Trafficking Task Force will work endlessly to remove these predators from our communities.”