Dyersburg is a city of about 16,000 residents in northwest Tennessee. It is the county seat of Dyer County, located about 79 miles northeast of Memphis. Prostitution is a crime with a well-documented presence in Dyersburg. For example, in May 2007, two women were arrested on Davis Road after a joint investigation by Dyersburg police and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. A day later, an undercover police operation arrested another woman and her alleged pimp during a sting at the Sunrise Inn. In 2009, a woman was arrested on a prostitution charge at the Economy Inn after police responded to a call about an altercation over payment, and two more women who were alleged to have offered services to undercover officers were arrested on that night. In 2011, a Dyersburg man called police and said that a woman he had paid for sex stole $40 dollars from him, and told police that he wanted what he paid for or wanted his money back. Officers cited her for prostitution and him for patronizing a prostitute.

In May 2017, a two-day operation was conducted by Special Agents with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the Dyersburg Police Department, and Homeland Security Investigations, and resulted in the arrest of 12 men on prostitution-related charges. The Dyersburg reverse sting, called “Operation Someone Like Me”, focused on identifying potential victims of human trafficking, while targeting those attempting to purchase illicit sex. Over the two-day period, undercover Special Agents posted three ads online each day. In that time, there were 197 unique contacts made to these ads, and more than 4-thousand messages were exchanged between undercover Agents and potential sex buyers/ traffickers. A total of 12 men responded to those ads and attempted to purchase sex from a prostituted woman. Ten individuals were given citations. Two were physically arrested. Those charged had their identities (name, date of birth, city of residence) posted in news reports.