Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Michael Jeffries and two other men have been arrested on sex trafficking and interstate prostitution charges, a spokesperson for federal prosecutors says.

Details of the criminal charges were not immediately available. 

Tuesday's arrest comes after years of sexual misconduct allegations, made in civil lawsuits and the media, from young people who said Mr Jeffries lured them with promises of modelling work and then pressed them into sex acts.

AP has sought comment for Brian Bieber, an attorney who has represented Mr Jeffries. Information on attorneys for the other defendants was not immediately available.

Brooklyn-based US Attorney Breon Peace, along with FBI and police officials, is set to hold a news conference later on Monday, local time. 

Mr Jeffries left Ohio-based Abercrombie & Fitch in 2014.

One civil lawsuit filed in New York last year accused Abercrombie of allowing Mr Jeffries to run a sex-trafficking organisation during his 22-year tenure. 

The lawsuit said he had modelling scouts scouring the internet for victims, and that some prospective models became sex-trafficking victims.

Abercrombie last year said it had hired an outside law firm to conduct an independent investigation after a report on similar allegations was aired by the BBC.

The BBC investigation included a dozen men who described being at events involving sex acts they said were staged by Jeffries and his partner, Matthew Smith, often at his home in New York and hotels in London, Paris and elsewhere.

When the civil lawsuit was filed in New York last year, Mr Bieber declined to comment on the allegations.

AP