A Baltimore businessman was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison Monday after pleading guilty to paying a woman $5,000 to travel across state lines to have sex with him.
Chuck Nabit was once known as a family man and respected multimillionaire patron of the arts who gave to multiple museums and schools. But that reputation came tumbling down after he was arrested in June 2020 for spending more than $90,000 in two years on an extensive network of prostitutes – many of whom were drug addicts and desperate for cash or even a hot meal.
In April, the married father-of-two pleaded guilty a single count of transportation of an individual to engage in prostitution.
As part of the trafficking guilty plea, he admitted to ‘demeaning and dehumanizing’ multiple women, paying them as little as one dollar to film themselves urinating or perform sex acts on the businessman in his office.
‘He led a double life,’ U.S. District Judge George Levi Russell III said Tuesday in the US district court of Baltimore, as he sentenced Nabit to 18 months in prison.
Tuesday’s sentencing hearing, which lasted more than four hours, even played a GoPro recording of the disgraced financier telling one drug addicted woman he would gladly have sex with her dead body, because he did not ‘want a warm corpse to go to waste.’
Chuck Nabit, a family man and multimillionaire patron of the arts who gave to multiple museums and schools in the Baltimore area, secretly carried out a double life and oversaw an extensive network of prostitutes over many years to fulfill a flurry of sexual desires
Nabit, a father of two, lived a double life, and has spent over $100,000 on therapy to mend his relationship with his wife, Mary Kate, third from left
Two years later, the same woman ended up dead, from an apparent drug overdose.
Last year, federal agents raided Nabit’s office at the investment firm Westport Group LLC, and found a couch that converted to a bed, five GoPro cameras, and sex toys in his desk.
Agents also uncovered a stash of videos and photos Nabit recorded of himself having sex with the women.
Nabit would arrange for sex workers to be brought to his office in downtown Baltimore, the court heard.
He would regularly pay the desperate sex workers – who were often addicted to drugs – sums of $50, $40 or $35, to perform sex acts on-camera and send him degrading videos of them relieving themselves, prosecutors told the court.
Sometimes he would pay them as little as a dollar to perform for him.
Prosecutors also submitted hundreds of text messages sent from and received by Nabit’s phone.
The messages showed the women pleading with the millionaire for enough money just to buy a hot meal.
‘The defendant specifically preyed on lower class females with drug addictions and other vulnerabilities,’ prosecutors attested at Monday’s trial.
‘The defendant’s manipulative and malevolent conduct is further demonstrated by his repeated payments of just a single dollar at a time to several of the victims until they met his demands.’
Nabit told one woman (not pictured) that he would gladly have sex with her dead body, because he did not ‘want a warm corpse to go to waste’
The disgraced financier shelled out more than $90,000 on his secret sex-trafficking business in the past two years alone – with several payments going to four known sex trafficking victims
Prosecutors had pursued a three-year sentence for the disgraced financier after his guilty plea. Nabit’s defense attorneys sought no more than six months for their client.
They argued the longtime-Baltimore fixture should have been prosecuted as a regular sex customer or ‘John,’ and not as a human trafficker – which carries tougher penalties.
Judge Russell III settled on 18 months.
One of Nabit’s victims wrote to the judge before Monday’s trial, detailing how she still suffers panic attacks and nightmares and struggles to leave her bedroom after her encounters with Nabit.
She described him as a man who would erupt if he didn’t receive the attention or sexual favors he wanted.
In the 15 months since his arrest by federal agents, Nabit has spent more than $100,000 on therapy and marriage counseling, in an effort his attorney alleges meant to save his marriage and dissect the compulsions that led him to his divergence into a depraved double life.
His psychiatrist, Dr. Stacy Chris Kraft, told the court that Nabit suffered obsessive-compulsive tendencies, low self-esteem and sex addiction, and that the businessman previously struggled with his relationships with women, citing that he did not marry until age 48.
She attested that Nabit was a lonely man in an unhappy marriage, who sought gratification through slews of sex workers.
‘He had these sort of fantasy relationships in his head with these women,’ Kraft told the court during the four-hour hearing. ‘He perceived them like they were girlfriends.’
Nabit’s wife, Mary Kate Nabit, also wrote to the judge, in a desperate plea for mercy for her husband.
She detailed the pain and shame his ‘addictive behaviors’ caused her and their two children, and brought up his work to redeem and heal himself with therapy and church counseling.
He described to the judge how her husband had always been a devoted father.
‘Our biggest concern is our children’s well-being,’ she wrote. ‘It is heartbreaking to think that their good character could be tarnished due to their father’s mistakes. Chuck’s going to jail would only make the situation worse for our children.’
Prosecutors charged Nabit under the Mann Act, a 100-year-old federal law intended today to prosecute the human traffickers who cross state lines to pimp out women.
Nabit’s attorneys, tried to paint a more innocent picture of the businessman’s practices, stating he would enlist the sex workers to serve as his escorts and travel companions, paying one woman more than $30,000 in a single year.
In addition to his sentence, Nabit was also ordered to pay a fine of $55,000 and a special assessment of $5,100.