After a man convicted of a sex trafficking offense was released from prison, he was hired as an Amazon driver and exposed himself to a woman during a package delivery, federal prosecutors said.
Mark Pinnock, 32, of Boston, was convicted of sex trafficking a 15-year-old girl in 2014 and served an eight-year prison sentence before he was released in 2022 – when he started working for Amazon under federal supervision, according to prosecutors.
In July 2022, while delivering a package, he exposed his genitals to a woman working as a custodian at a condominium complex in Brockton, Massachusetts, prosecutors said.
Pinnock went on to intimidate the woman – and threatened to have immigration officials arrest her – to stop her from testifying against him in court after she reported him to police, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.
Now, Pinnock has agreed to plead guilty to witness intimidation, the attorney’s office announced in a July 28 news release.
Information regarding Pinnock’s legal representation wasn’t listed in court records the morning of July 30.
McClatchy News contacted Amazon for comment on July 30 and was awaiting a response.
The intimidation and threats
On July 25, 2022, Brockton police charged Pinnock with open and gross lewdness and lascivious behaviour after they said he exposed himself to the woman at the condo complex in the city, according to an information document charging him in the federal case.
Since he is accused of committing the state crime while on federal supervised release, a US district judge scheduled a hearing for Nov 4 to revoke his supervised release, the information says.
A week before the hearing, Pinnock had a co-conspirator, who wasn’t identified by prosecutors, visit the woman at the condo complex to warn her against testifying against Pinnock in court, according to prosecutors.
During the encounter, the co-conspirator “stood with his hand in his pocket as if he had something in it,” prosecutors said.
Afterward, Pinnock sent a threatening, anonymous text – using an encrypted messaging platform – to a security guard at the Brockton complex, according to prosecutors.
The message said “‘let the cleaning lady know’ she would be arrested by immigration officials if she were to go to court,” prosecutors said.
Then, Pinnock called an Immigration and Customs Enforcement tip line three separate times saying the woman was illegally working at the Brockton complex and that she was “gang-affiliated,” according to the information.
He made these calls in the hopes that ICE officials would detain or remove her from the U.S., the information says.
If convicted on the charge of witness intimidation, Pinnock would face up to 20 years in prison, the release said.
The latest case against Pinnock comes nearly ten years after he was caught with a 15-year-old at a hotel in Cambridge in December 2013, according to an earlier news release from prosecutors.
Investigators learned Pinnock was sex trafficking the girl and had directed her to engage in sex acts for money in Boston, prosecutors said.
As a result, he was sentenced to eight years in prison on Dec 15, 2014, after pleading guilty to “recruiting and transporting a minor to engage in prostitution,” according to officials.
Brockton is a city about 25 miles south of Boston. – The Charlotte Observer/Tribune News Service gggggg
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