Bolingbrook ex-con faces charges of sex trafficking
BY BILL BIRD wbird@stmedianetwork.com January 5, 2012 7:55PM
Updated: February 7, 2012 8:16AM
A cash-strapped 17-year-old girl fell under the control of an ex-convict from Bolingbrook, who forced her into prostitution for more than three months until her mother filed a missing persons report and later rescued her, according to the FBI.
McKenzie J. Carson, 39, was arrested twice in two years on prostitution-related charges in Westmont and Oswego. He was charged Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Chicago with sexual trafficking of children by force, fraud or coercion.
Carson, whose nickname is “Casino,” lives in a one-story house on the 200 block of Campbell Drive, about a mile southeast of Boughton and Weber roads in Bolingbrook. He is accused of advertising at least five women and girls on the Internet and driving them to paid sexual encounters at Chicago-area hotels and other places, according to an FBI affidavit.
FBI agents searched Carson’s vehicle and recovered a computer that contained photos of the 17-year-old and other women in a folder with the heading “hoes,” the affidavit said.
The girl in November 2009 told a neighbor at the apartment complex where they lived that she was having financial trouble, the affidavit read in part. The man took her to a Motel 6 in Joliet where she met Carson, and when she told Carson she was only 17, he allegedly replied, “That don’t matter,” according to the affidavit.
Carson allegedly raped her in a motel room and forced her to start working for him that night as a prostitute. He allegedly threatened to kill her if she didn’t continue working for him, the FBI said.
Toward the end of February 2010, the girl’s mother filed a missing persons report with police, the FBI said. The girl found out and told Carson, who took a battery from her wireless telephone and left her in a motel room with no way to leave or contact anyone, according to the FBI.
Carson later allegedly said he would let her go provided she gave him all the money she made performing sex acts, which she did, the FBI said. Carson allegedly returned her phone to her and she called her mother, who picked her up at the motel.
An FBI news release indicated Carson since 2010 has been recruiting young women — including minors — to work for him as prostitutes in the Chicago area. He allegedly used various websites to arrange the trysts.
The FBI was assisted in the case by agents of the DuPage Metropolitan Enforcement Group, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office and the Bolingbrook, Channahon, Downers Grove, Joliet, Marseilles, Naperville, Oswego, Romeoville, Shorewood and Westmont police departments.
Carson in May 2008 served 31 days in Will County Jail in Joliet, after being convicted of a misdemeanor charge of possession of drug paraphernalia, according to records on file in Will County Circuit Court.
He was sentenced to prison in November of that year, after being found guilty of a felony charge of pandering without compulsion in Westmont, DuPage County Circuit Court records showed.
Carson was arrested again in August 2010 and charged with soliciting a prostitute, during a sting operation conducted by Oswego police, records indicated.
A bond hearing for Carson, who is at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, is set for Friday.
