Situated in the southern part of the state, Billings is the largest city in Montana (and county seat of Yellowstone County, MT) with approximately 110,000 residents. Prostitution and sex trafficking have been persistent and visible problems in the area for decades, including through illicit massage businesses and in motels along highway routes. The state has a large number of truck stops and budget motels catering to highway traffic that police believe contribute to the incidence of prostitution and sex trafficking, especially in cities such as Billings located along the I-90 corridor.

Among the more serious issues associated with the area’s commercial sex market are child sex trafficking and violence against individuals engaging in commercial sex. In May 2022, a man was arrested for his role in a sex and drug trafficking ring, including promoting the prostitution of two people, one of them being an underage girl. The following month, the BPD (along with the FBI and Montana Division of Criminal Investigation) investigated a case which resulted in a 42-year-old pleading guilty to sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion, sex trafficking of a minor, transportation of a person with intent to engage in prostitution and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. More than a dozen women and girls were forced by threats and violence into his prostitution network. Other examples from 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 illustrate how sex trafficking is used to fuel the commercial sex trade in Billings. In July, 2022, a Billings man was sentenced today to 26 years in prison, to be followed by a lifetime of supervised release, for multiple crimes stemming from a broad investigation into a sex trafficking network that involved nearly 20 victims, including minor girls, violence, drugs, and the shooting death of a sex trafficking victim.

The Billings Police Department (BPD) has been spearheading Montana’s demand reduction efforts since the late 1970s. In 1976, the first sex buyer arrest occurred in Billings when the state passed a new prostitution law allowing officers to arrest individuals purchasing sex in addition to prostituted persons. The sex buyer’s identity and age were included in reports by local media outlets. The BPD routinely conduct street-level reverse stings in an effort to respond to residential complaints in the city. Billings’ first street-level reverse sting in 1989, resulted in the arrest of 11 male sex buyers. During this operation officers used “a high tech surveillance van, wire taps, and tape recorders” to record interactions between male sex buyers and undercover police officers posing as prostituted women. The strategy was credited as a critical factor in revitalizing the city’s downtown area in the 1990s. Some of the more recent street-level reverse sting operations have resulted in the arrest of over 20 male sex buyers. In August 2013, the BPD announced that 25 people had been arrested for soliciting prostitution from an undercover officer. The operation was conducted by the City County Special Investigations Unit (made up of Billings Police and Yellowstone County Sheriff’s deputies) over two weeks.

City officials and community members have noted an upsurge in web and storefront solicitation, suggesting that the commercial sex market is moving online. To address this shift, Billings police have incorporated web-based reverse stings into their operations and routinely release sex buyer names and photos to the media. For example, in 2018, a 29-year-old man was sentenced to four years in prison after having been found guilty of soliciting sex from a minor online for the second time. According to reports, the man had responded to a decoy ad posted by the Montana Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigation offering to sexually exploit a minor in exchange for money. Undercover officers communicated with the sex buyer and arranged to meet at a Billings hotel. Upon the sex buyer’s arrival and agreement to engage in the sexual exploitation of a minor, he was arrested by undercover officers. In November 2018, the offender pleaded not guilty in Yellowstone County District Court to a single count of prostitution, a felony. He was sentenced to four years in prison under a plea deal that would run concurrently with a previous charge of child sexual abuse from 2014 (the offender was found to have violated probation for this conviction in February 2015 when he was arrested during a prostitution sting in Bismarck, ND). As a part of his 2018 sentencing, the offender was required to complete sex offender treatment, obtain a psychosexual evaluation, and follow the evaluation’s recommendations. In addition, officers successfully identified and rescued a child sex trafficking victim during this investigation. The identity and image of the sex buyer were released by local media outlets. 

In 2021, the BPD, with assistance from the the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Office, Homeland Security Investigations, and the FBI, conducted a web-based reverse sting operation that targeted suspects who sought to solicit minors online with the intent to engage in sexual activity or meet adults trafficking minors for sex. As a result of the two-day investigation, nine male sex buyers were arrested—eight of the men were from Billings. In addition, one man was arrested in Wyoming and was charged with coercion or enticement of prostitution. The identities and images of arrested offenders were included in reports by local media outlets.