Rianna Croxford was in the BBC’s newsroom in London when she heard that former Abercrombie & Fitch chief executive officer Mike Jeffries had been arrested for sex trafficking and interstate prostitution. Within 24 hours, she was on a flight to New York to attend his arraignment In Central Islip, N.Y.
The multi-award-winning investigations correspondent for BBC News led the multipart series “World of Secrets: The Abercrombie Guys” podcast, and the documentary “The Abercrombie Guys: The Dark Side of Cool” that were released last fall. A criminal investigation into Jeffries, his life partner Matthew Smith and an alleged middleman James Jacobson followed, as well as civil legal action by some accusers last fall. And after being arrested last week Jeffries, Smith and Jacobson each face one count of sex trafficking and 15 counts of interstate prostitution.
While discussing the federal indictment against Jeffries, Smith and Jacobson, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern district of New York Breon Price mentioned how a media report preluded the investigation. A spokesperson for his office declined comment Monday about Croxford’s role or the BBC’s investigation.
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Jeffries, 80, plead not guilty Friday to all charges Friday in the Central Islip federal courthouse, as did Jacobson, 71. Smith, 61, who is considered a flight risk by the authorities due to having U.K. and the U.S. passports, is being held. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Jeffries’ attorney Brian Bieber did not respond immediately Monday to a request seeking comment about Croxford’s role. Jacobson’s attorney could not be reached.
Standing amidst a bank of reporters and camera crews outside of the Richard Meier-designed courthouse following Jeffries’ and Jacobson’s departures with their respective attorneys, Croxford spoke with WWD about what put the BBC investigation into motion.
While researching “an entirely separate story related to the fashion industry” in January 2021, she “stumbled across quite a cryptic post on Instagram,” by a group of male models, who were talking about “how they felt abuse in the fashion industry was being overlooked,” Croxford said. After reaching out to one of the models, Barrett Pall, Croxford “jumped on the phone with him and talked about a whole range of things.” After an hour, Pall told Croxford that he felt that he could trust her “with a secret that he had never really told anyone before,” she said.
The model told Croxford of an alleged experience with Jeffries and how a friend had allegedly referred him “to this mysterious middleman, who had apparently no nose and a snakeskin patch over it,” she said, referring to Jacobson. The model spoke of having been taken to the Hamptons to “this highly organized, elaborate operation, where these models in Abercrombie uniforms were facilitating these events,” Croxford said.
What struck her was one of his diary entries that read, “’FU Abercrombie & Fitch.’ And ‘FU Abercrombie Jim’,” she said. “So, I felt something had gone on.”
Pall did not respond to a media request Monday. Another model David Bradberry, who was also featured in the BBC documentary, was in the courtroom Friday with his husband. “I saw Mike Jeffries looking over at them several times,” Coxford said. “David was staring straight ahead not looking at anybody.”
As a Millennial, Croxford said she was very familiar with Abercrombie & Fitch from growing up, when “that brand dominated” her school years. Looking online for leads — “all turned up blanks. There was absolutely nothing in the public domain about these allegations,” the BBC staffer of six-plus years said.
She then pieced together her own trail, partially through word-of-mouth and by reaching out “speculatively” to hundreds of former Abercrombie & Fitch models, as well as former household staff of Jeffries and other people, “who had never spoken before,” she said. “I guess that over three years I built trust with men who had never come forward, men who had been terrified into silence. They had signed non-disclosure agreements. Some of them said they were told they could be sued for a million dollars, if they spoke [out.]”
Many of the men Croxford met identify as heterosexual, and there was a lot of shame in talking about same-sex abuse, she said. In a couple of instances, Croxford was allegedly accused of being “a spy for Jeffries, because they thought he had so much money and clout that he maybe was trying to figure out if people were talking,” she said.
As of Friday afternoon, Croxford, a University of Cambridge graduate, had spoken to more than 20 people, who allegedly helped organize or attended events for Jeffries. She also had interviewed Jacobson, after tracking him down through home and property records. “He went through lots of different aliases. As we saw from the indictment, he also went by ‘Mrs. Cook,’ which was the first time that I had heard of that, and ‘Todd.’”
Their last meeting had been in a coffee shop in Rice Lake, Wisc., in August 2023, when Jacobson allegedly asked Croxford repeatedly to do a deal. “He was [allegedly] telling me, ‘Leave my name out. I’ll tell you everything’,” Croxford said. “He even put on a bunch of accents, trying to be quite charming to try to dissuade me from publishing. I think he thought I was bluffing at one point.”
When Croxford first knocked on the door of his Wisconsin residence, she said he sat on his porch, “put his head in his hands and cursed,” she said. That began 48 hours of Jacobson allegedly asking for a deal and the journalist “pushing for information. First, he [allegedly] said he didn’t know anything, then he said he knew a lot. He was trying to have it both ways,” Croxford said. “We don’t do deals. I had so much evidence. I felt a duty to [do what I did].”
As for what Friday’s arraignment meant to Croxford, she exhaled and said, “I really don’t know. I’m trying to find the words, It’s been quite an emotional week. I’ve been getting loads of messages from my sources. Some of them went on the record. Some of them from behind-the-scenes, who were just expressing immense gratitude that I listened to them, their allegations were taken seriously. It’s so rare to see cases like this result in an arrest. Let alone a trial, which we hear [supposedly] is coming up now,” she said.
The yearslong endeavor required “quite a lot of sacrifices, as well as a lot of time, a lot of commitments and a lot of highs and lows. You never know if you’re going to pull something like this off,” she said, noting the numerous legal hoops that must be jumped through.
Asked if she sees a connection or pattern with some of the other major sex scandals like ones involving “P. Diddy,” Sean Combs or the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Croxford said, “We are seeing yet again allegations of powerful people using their power to abuse those who are vulnerable, allegedly. What’s been quite striking in the past few weeks is now we’re hearing a lot of allegations from men.”
She continued, “I asked a lot of the men I spoke to why they felt they weren’t able to speak up, when #MeToo kicked off [in 2017.] They said, ‘That wasn’t for me. That wasn’t our time’,” Croxford said, “We’re seeing with P. Diddy, there are also men speaking out against him.”
Looking back at last week’s arrests and arraignments, Croxford said, “It’s really the power of journalism to hold people to account. This is sort of evidence that the experience of men matters.”
Jeffries and Jacobson are due back in court on Dec. 12. in Long Island.
The “World of Secrets” podcast is accessible on the BBC’s site and via Apple and Spotify.
