According to the court documents, an accused child sex trafficker kept a girl under his control by threatening to sell her to someone who would do “bad” things to her. The 34-year-old man from North Carolina is charged with alleged child sex trafficking and coercion and enticement of minors in federal court in South Carolina.
The 34-year-old man, Johnny Thomas, and Becca Mills, face the same charges. Their cases have been open since late July, but prosecutors formally announced their charges on Monday. Both face the possibility of life imprisonment, if convicted.
One of the victims told authorities that she was a runaway. Prosecutors say that she told investigators that she met a man going by the name “Rico” on the video chat program “Monkey.” The 15-year-old girl ran away from home and was picked up at a gas station by “Rico” in early 2019. The man drove her to an unknown apartment in Virginia.
The suspect made the girl to snort cocaine to wake her up when she was tired. The victim said she was photographed for commercial sex advertisements. She was forced to have sex with a man who choked the victim until she passed out and woke up bleeding from her vaginal area.
The suspect told her numerous times if she did not perform commercial sex acts and make money for him that he would sell her, and that Thomas would sell her to someone worse than him/ Thomas said people would ‘chain her up to a bed, shoot her full of heroin, and do bad things to her’. Thomas told her this person would slice her toes and body parts off.
In March, 2019, investigators found commercial sex ads for minor girls and traced the phone number to Thomas. Records show that Thomas was arrested that same day. Mills was arrested in June 2019.
