A convicted criminal allegedly lured a 16-year-old girl from her Sydney home to the U.S. for sex.

Sean Price, 39, is accused of grooming the Lindfield schoolgirl from Sydney’s north shore on Snapchat for months before convincing her to board a plane to Los Angeles to engage in sexual activity, according to a complaint made in the Eastern District of New York.

Price, whose long rap sheet includes a 1995 conviction for criminally negligent homicide for the death of a passenger in a car crash, allegedly received nude photos from the teen before he sent her US$1,600 (AU$2,150) for the airfare, according to news.com.au.

His estranged wife, Rhyse Price, told Mail Online she was sickened by the allegations.

Ms Price said she was devastated for their young daughter.

‘I’m broken for my four-year-old daughter. She adores him despite his absence,’ Ms Price said.

Asked if she had a message for Price, his estranged wife said: ‘To Sean: I hope your daughter never has to suffer the sins you have placed in her name.’

‘I feel for this girl’s parents. I cannot imagine their fears and just what they must have been going through while she was missing. I can’t believe this. He is sick.’

US authorities allege the teen landed in Los Angeles before Price rented a car and drove her 12,000km to New York.

The pair allegedly had sex along the way, according the New York Daily News.

Police found the 16-year-old, who cannot be named, in the basement of Price’s mother’s home in Queens, New York last week.

When authorities arrived, Price’s mother told them her son and the teenager weren’t there – as the pair tried to hide, the paper reported.

The teen reportedly suffers from anxiety disorder and was having troubles at home when she met Price online.

Price was refused bail on Wednesday after he tried to convince a magistrate to grant it by offering up his mother’s house.

‘Any offer doesn’t give the court much confidence,’ Brooklyn Federal Magistrate Judge Viktor Pohorelsky said, according to the NY Daily News.

An Australian Federal Police spokesperson told Mail Online the teenager was reported missing to NSW Police from her Lindfield home on April 11.

‘A number of inquiries were made by police who were able to determine the teenager had left the country and travelled to the United States,’ the spokesperson said.

‘Collaboration between the Australian Federal Police and U.S. law enforcement officials led to the girl being located in New York State in the company of a 39-year-old man on Friday, 12 May.

‘The man was arrested and charged with a number of offences relating to his conduct and interactions with the girl and will face court action in the U.S.’

Price allegedly wired nearly AUD$2150 dollars to the teen in December and in return received naked pictures of her, court documents revealed

The spokesperson said the girl has returned to Australia.

Her poor family must have been worried sick!  I can’t even begin to imagine what this young girl has been through.

Meanwhile in another news story

9 News reports, a teenage girl from West Africa has been held in a Sydney home against her will and used as a sex slave for weeks before managing to escape.

Police are searching for a woman hailed as a Good Samaritan who found the 17-year-old after she escaped in the early hours from a Sydney home on April 27 and dropped her at an innerwest Asylum Seeker Centre.

The teen from Guinea says she arrived in Sydney in early April and was driven to a home believed to be in the city’s metropolitan area – where she was kept in a room and sexually assaulted by a number of men.

The AFP’s Human Trafficking Unit has been brought in to investigate along with the NSW Police’s State Crime Command’s Sex Crimes Squad.

The girl says in January she met a man in her home country who offered to bring her to Australia as his cleaner and in April they travelled together via Paris to Sydney.

It’s believed the woman who rescued the teen is called Nicole and she drives a small red car, police said today.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

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