Former Portsmouth, Ohio, city council member and attorney Michael Mearan was arrested today on human trafficking, racketeering and related charges, officials said.
The Scioto County Jail confirmed at 3:20 p.m. that deputies were in the process of booking Mearan, who was the focus of an Enquirer investigative report last year into sex trafficking in the small city 100 miles east of Cincinnati along the Ohio River.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost tweeted about the arrest.
Mearan, 74, is charged with nine counts of promoting prostitution, five counts of compelling prostitution, three counts of trafficking in person and one count of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activities, Yost said.
All the charges are felonies. Yost said Mearan faces more than 70 years in prison if convicted.
Yost told The Enquirer a that Scioto County grand jury indicted Mearan on all the charges they were presented with Friday morning, and an arrest warrant was secured afterward.
“If Dante were around, he’d invent an eighth circle of hell for this guy,” Yost said.
