SHERIDAN — In 2021, Sweetwater Against Trafficking partnered with Uprising, a statewide anti-human trafficking group based in Sheridan, to conduct a live sting operation to target human trafficking buyers. The operation was simple: deputies with the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office set up fake accounts posing as prostitutes and let the buyers come to them.
Staff were met with an “overwhelming” amount of people in just Sweetwater County who wanted to purchase sex, said Lt. Derek Morrell with the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office.
“They had been underneath our nose the entire time, but we just didn’t know what to look for,” Morrell said. “We knew (then) we had a bigger issue in our community than what we originally thought.”
