Mike Jeffries, the gay 80-year-old embattled former CEO of clothing brand Abercrombie & Fitch, has dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, his lawyers have said in court documents filed this week. They are requesting a hearing to determine if Jefferies is fit to stand trial for federal criminal charges in connection to sex trafficking.
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Jeffries’ lawyers said that a neuropsychologist diagnosed the businessman after his legal team questioned his health and concentration, according to the documents, NBC News reports.
"The Michael Jeffries who presented himself did not even come close to resembling a master’s degree-educated individual, who was just nine years earlier, the chief executive officer of a publicly traded company," the new filing states.
Police arrested Jeffries earlier this year in Florida on one charge of sex trafficking and 15 counts of interstate prostitution. Jeffries pleaded not guilty after posting a $10 million bond and being ordered by a judge to home detention.
Authorities allege that Jeffries and his boyfriend Matthew Smith along with associate James Jacobson operated the trafficking scheme, with Jacobson acting as a recruiter.
The men were indicted one year after Abercrombie & Fitch announced it would be hiring an independent law firm to investigate allegations against Jeffries and Smith, revealed in a report by the BBC, claiming that the pair sexually exploited young men during Jeffries’s time as CEO, which spanned 1992 to 2014. Company officials have said current leadership was not previously aware of the allegations.
Authorities said in an indictment that the men allegedly "employed coercive, fraudulent and deceptive tactics in connection with the recruitment, hiring, transportation, obtaining, maintaining, solicitation and payment of the men to engage in commercial sex."
Prosecutors said that the men were told not doing certain sexual acts would harm their careers. Many of the men allegedly targeted by Jeffries and the others were also in precarious financial situations.
The doctor concluded that “Mr. Jeffries currently suffers from dementia with behavioral disturbance ... Alzheimer’s disease with late onset (probable) ... and Lewy body dementia," the recent filing says, according to NBC News.
The outlet reports that a competency hearing has been set for June.
Heather Cucolo, a New York Law School professor who specializes in mental disability and criminal law, told the BBC that there is limited data on how the U.S. justice system treats those with dementia.
"If Mike Jeffries is found competent, the case will move forward," she told the outlet. "But if he's deemed incompetent, and it's found there's no reasonable likelihood that his competency will be restored, then the charges would have to be dropped."
