A 32-year-old Columbus, Georgia woman has been sentenced to 135 months in federal prison for trafficking a 17-year-old girl for commercial sex, a punishment that matches almost exactly what her co-conspirator received three months earlier. Chloe Michelle Alexander was sentenced on Monday in Montgomery, Alabama, and will also serve five years of supervised release and register as a sex offender for the rest of her life.
The sentencing was announced by United States Attorney Thomas Govan and Ellen Johnson of Homeland Security Investigations Georgia and Alabama, according to NowGeorgia. “Children should never be targets for sexual exploitation, and those who facilitate or participate in that exploitation will face serious consequences,” Govan said. Johnson added that “protecting children from sexual exploitation is one of the highest priorities for HSI.”
Court records show Alexander conspired with 24-year-old Jada Renee Coggins of Opelika, Alabama, beginning in 2023 to induce the teenage victim into commercial sex acts. Per the plea agreement, Alexander photographed the victim for use in online advertisements, transported her to locations where she was forced into commercial sex acts, and arranged customers for those acts, per the same account relayed by NowGeorgia. Coggins pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and was sentenced to the identical 135-month term on June 10, 2026, with the same five years of supervised release and lifetime sex offender registration, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Alabama.
How the Scheme Operated Across State Lines
Alexander photographed the victim for use in online advertisements. 1819 News reported that Coggins used sexually explicit images to advertise the minor for sex online.
The pair entered guilty plea agreements in the federal case, which had originally been scheduled for a March 2026 trial. A federal judge presided over the case. Federal law provides a 15-year minimum sentence, with a 10-year minimum when the offender is under 18, according to EveryCRSReport.
Multi-Agency Investigation and No Chance of Parole
The investigation into the scheme was carried out jointly by Homeland Security Investigations, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, and the Opelika Police Department. Ellen Johnson of HSI in Georgia and Alabama was among the officials who announced the sentencing.
Because the federal system has no parole, both Alexander and Coggins will serve their sentences without parole.
Part of a Broader Federal Child Exploitation Push
The prosecution was brought under Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide Department of Justice initiative launched in May 2006 to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse. The initiative is led by U.S. Attorneys' offices and CEOS and marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute child exploiters while identifying and rescuing victims. The Department of Justice formally expanded the program in May 2011 to cover all federal child sexual exploitation offenses, explicitly including minor sex trafficking prosecutions alongside online child exploitation crimes.
