A 44-year-old Auburn man, who trolled neighborhoods in South King County looking for teenage girls to recruit into prostitution, was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Seattle to 10 years in prison and 15 years of supervised release for four criminal counts related to sex trafficking.

A jury convicted Nathan Bonds in November 2014 of two counts of sex trafficking of a juvenile and two counts of transportation of a juvenile to engage in prostitution.

At sentencing U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour said, “This is a serious case involving vulnerable children.”

“This defendant preyed on vulnerable teens to enrich himself,” said U.S. Attorney Annette L. Hayes in a media release. “He preyed on their homelessness, and their emotional and mental health challenges to lure them into prostitution. We thank the law enforcement agencies who work tirelessly to bring defendants such as this one to justice.”

According to records in the case and testimony at trial, in April 2013, Bonds was parked outside a Kent convenience store when he spotted and befriended a 15-year-old Kent girl who had run away from home. Bonds let the girl borrow his cellphone, and then let her sit in his car, out of the rain.

Bonds manipulated the girl into accompanying him to a hotel room where he raped her. Over the next few days, Bonds coerced the girl into working for him as a prostitute, convincing her she had no other options.

Bonds advertised the girl on backpage.com and made her give him all of the money she earned from prostitution acts. He also recruited the girl’s 17-year-old friend to work for him as a prostitute. On April 19, 2013, Bonds transported the 15-year-old girl and her 17-year-old friend, as well as a drug-addicted, homeless adult woman that he had also manipulated into working for him as a prostitute, to Portland to engage in prostitution.

The Auburn man forced the two teens to take sexually explicit photographs, and then used some of those photographs to advertise them on backpage.com.

Ultimately, both teens returned to their families and law enforcement identified Bonds as a sex trafficker. He was arrested June 5, 2013, and law enforcement recovered the computer and cellphone he used to conduct the prostitution business, both of which contained evidence establishing Bonds’ longtime involvement in prostitution.

The case was investigated by the North-Central Sound Child Exploitation Task Force, which includes officers and agents from the Kent Police Department and FBI.

Kent Police got the lead on the case when the older teen disclosed to her Kent school staff on April 23, 2013 that she had been with a pimp called “Slim” and her 15-year-old friend the previous weekend.

Police eventually tracked down Bonds, partly through the license plate number of a Dodge Magnum he drove to Oregon, at a friend’s house in Mill Creek. The friend owned the Dodge. Snohomish County deputies arrested Bonds.