Security guard for The FBI charged with human trafficking
Cleveland NC April 24 2021
A woman is charged with human trafficking after investigators say she accepted money to allow a 47-year-old man to have sex with her teenage son.
The illicit interactions began in December and ended in March, according to arrest warrants.
The allegations came into the FBI and accused Joseph Frances Tippett of having sex with the 15-year-old boy.
At the time, Tippett was a security guard for a firm that patrolled FBI and other federal buildings.
Investigators went to Tippett’s York, South Carolina, home where they found him and the teen on March 27. During that visit, they also saw collars and bondage objects, according to search warrants.
The teenager was taken to the York Police Department. Tippett was arrested and charged with criminal sexual conduct with a minor or attempt – victim under 16 years of age – second degree. He is being held without bond.
As the investigation continued, the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office was contacted, and detectives went to the teenager’s home near Kings Mountain where they met his 41-year-old mother whose name is not being listed to protect her son’s identity.
“Special agents discovered that the minor’s mother, (name omitted), actually knew of the sexual relationship that her son and Mr. Tippett were partaking in. They also discovered that (she) was receiving money from Mr. Tippett in exchange for her son,” investigators wrote in the search warrant.
During questioning, the woman painted a different picture of what happened.
She and her two sons live in a mobile home on $700 a month from Supplemental Security Income checks. Her son met Tippett at the Haunted Pyramids in Lawndale and took a job detailing cars for him, the woman told investigators.
Over the course of time, her son would stay at Tippett’s home sometimes for two to three weeks at a time. One day the teenager came home with a locked dog collar around his neck, she said in the interview. When asked who had the key, her son said Tippett, according to court documents.
In the search warrants, investigators said the woman previously admitted to taking two to three payments of $250 from Tippett for access to her son. In this follow-up interview, she said she only ever took $30 to $40. Any other money she accepted belonged to her son for the job he was hired to do, she told detectives.
When asked if the cash Tippett allegedly offered was hush money, the woman shrugged, court documents said.
The mother of two told investigators she wanted the contact to end and she intended to call police, but there is no documentation that she ever did so. She said she always wanted her family back together, with her 16-year-old son in temporary foster care.
The woman was arrested April 12, and is being held on a $100,000 bond.
Her only previous conviction in North Carolina was for school attendance/law violation in 2019. She was given probation for the misdemeanor offense.
shelbystar.com.
