Man convicted for trafficking Sacramento child, other women for sex across California
A man was convicted in federal court this week on two counts of sex trafficking, one of them involving a child, in Sacramento County and other locations throughout California.
Jaquorey Rashawn Carter, 24, was found guilty by a jury in California’s Eastern District court of one count of sex trafficking of a child and another count of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion. Carter is scheduled to be sentenced May 4, and the crimes carry a maximum of life in prison.
A previously sealed, 30-page criminal complaint filed in December 2018 details nearly four years of sex trafficking activity undertaken by Carter, who was accused of managing and transporting prostitutes from Sacramento to the Bay Area and other California cities.
The complaint includes a sworn affidavit from a Sacramento Police Department detective assigned to the FBI’s child exploitation task force, and accused Carter of managing one victim’s prostitution activity starting no later than September 2014, when the girl, referred to throughout as “Victim A,” was 14 years old. The victim’s prostitution as a minor continued through at least November 2016, the according to law enforcement.
The second count arose after a judge approved the monitoring of Carter’s phone calls. With that surveillance, investigators discovered that a 19-year-old woman, “Victim B,” was engaging in prostitution in Sacramento and throughout California under Carter’s control and coercion, including threats of violence.
The criminal complaint charged that in March 2015, then-18-year-old Carter transported 16-year-old Victim A and two other women, ages 23 and 19, to a Motel 6 in Sunnyvale for the purpose of prostitution.
Sunnyvale Police officers interviewed the three females, all of whom acknowledged that they had used the motel room for prostitution activity. A motel clerk told police that Carter had paid for the room in cash, and one officer witnessed Carter walking through the motel’s parking lot.
In an interview with police, Victim A said she had been engaging in prostitution for about a year, since she was 14 or 15.
“Victim A said she started by walking on ‘Watt,’ an area of Sacramento County known for prostitution activity,” the complaint reads. “She started engaging in prostitution with her minor sister.”
The teen also told police that the same man who had bought their motel room in Sunnyvale, whom she referred to as “Corey,” had also transported the two older women from Sacramento to Santa Rosa.
More than three years later, in July 2018, Sacramento Police Department officers conducting a traffic stop near Florin Road and Indian Lane discovered Carter, Victim A and two others inside a vehicle, according to the court documents.
No one was arrested during that stop, according to the criminal complaint, but upon learning that Carter and the victim had reconnected, agents searched for and found prostitution advertisements on the internet listed with a phone number associated with Victim A.
Soon after that and with court authorization, agents began intercepting and monitoring a cellphone used by Carter; phone company subscriber records linked this phone to a residence in Sacramento’s Meadowview neighborhood, the last known address for Carter’s mother.
The complaint alleged that Carter “routinely used Target Telephone 1 to facilitate sex trafficking by exercising control over sex workers, coordinating transportation of the sex workers he controlled, and grooming potential victims.” Agents learned via intercepted calls that Carter and at least two other associates “managed prostitution in Sacramento, Oakland and Southern California,” including the Los Angeles area.
In one call to an associate, not named in the criminal complaint, Carter told his associate: “I gonna bring her to hoe without consent,” court documents show.
Shortly after this call, law enforcement officials used geolocation information from Carter’s cellphone and forwarded the information to the California Highway Patrol, which located and stopped Carter’s vehicle near Dublin. Carter was arrested for giving false identification to police.
“At the time of the traffic stop, Carter was with four females, three of which were known to agents and officers as possible human trafficking victims,” the complaint states.
Authorities then intercepted another call in which Carter threatened to beat up one of the victims, Victim B, if she stopped working as a prostitute for him.
In response to that threat, deputies with the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office responded to the area where they believed Victim B to be, near the Walmart and 24-Hour Fitness on Florin Road and Stockton Boulevard, and observed her getting into a vehicle with an unidentified male. During a traffic stop, she admitted to getting into the vehicle for the purpose of prostitution, but declined deputies’ offer to take her to a nearby resource center for assistance.
An arrest warrant issued for Carter on Dec. 3, 2018, was executed two days later in the city of Sacramento, according to court records.
Carter was found guilty Wednesday, the sixth day of his jury trial. He remains in custody at the Sacramento County jail pending his federal prison sentencing.
