New Oakland County Human Trafficking Unit Busts Sex Ring In Madison Heights

Sampson was issued a $300,000 cash bond and ordered to have no contact with victims, witnesses or codefendants, and to wear an electronic tether. Forgays was issued a $250,000 cash bond with the same conditions.

Human trafficking is a form of forced labor involving coercion, fraud or threats, usually to obtain commercial sex acts. Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald, who unseated the county’s incumbent prosecutor Jessica Cooper in last year’s Democratic primary, and was elected in November, said the arrests coincide with her department’s fresh targeting of human trafficking. McDonald spoke Tuesday at a news conference at her offices in Pontiac, joined by Madison Heights Police Chief Corey Haines.

“I am proud to have inaugurated the first-ever human trafficking unit within the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office as one of my very first acts in office,” McDonald said.

The new trafficking unit “will enable us to more nimbly confront the scourge of human trafficking within Oakland County, as this case demonstrates,” she said. Some may be shocked to learn that human trafficking occurs amid the affluence of Oakland County, McDonald added.

“Many people think human trafficking is something that only happens somewhere else. But let me be clear that this crime is happening right here in Oakland County. These are cases in which we have young women — girls as young as 9, we’ve found  — being trafficked into prostitution. Children are being exploited in the worst way imaginable, by adults who trade their bodies for cash,” she said.

Read the full story by Bill Laitner on The Detroit Free Press

Category: Law Enforcement