Inset: Brandon Holguin (Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office). Background: The North County Correctional Facility in Castaic, Calif. (Google Maps).
A California man has been sentenced to years in prison for forcing a 14-year-old middle school student to spend hours preparing clothing for online resale after allegedly giving the child Adderall.
Brandon Holguin, 26, pleaded no contest earlier this week to human trafficking for labor, child abuse under conditions likely to cause great bodily injury or death, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor, according to a press release from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
He received a five-year state prison sentence and was ordered to pay $4,300 in restitution for taking the victim’s belongings, prosecutors said.
“Human trafficking often includes a predator luring a vulnerable child into illegal labor exploitation, as in this case,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman said in a statement.
The conduct occurred in May 2025 at a motel and other locations in Los Angeles County, Law&Crime previously reported.
Prosecutors said Holguin first met and targeted the 14-year-old at a thrift store several months before the alleged trafficking began on May 2, 2025.
Holguin later took the boy to a motel and made him sort and photograph used clothing items intended for sale online, according to the prosecution.
The workload involved hundreds of garments, and the sorting and photographing continued late into the evening, authorities said. Prosecutors alleged that Holguin gave the child Adderall to keep him working.
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The defendant allegedly directed the victim to take the amphetamine-based prescription drug, commonly known as Adderall, even though it made the child ill, so the work could continue into the night.
Holguin also took control of the boy’s cellphone, preventing his family from reaching him. He later told the child the phone had to be disposed of so the boy’s mother could not track him. Authorities said Holguin then sold the phone and used a fake identification document to pawn the victim’s jewelry, keeping hundreds of dollars from the transactions.
According to law enforcement, Holguin also planned to take the child hundreds of miles away to Northern California.
After that plan failed, prosecutors said, Holguin abandoned the boy on the side of a Los Angeles freeway in the early morning hours of May 5, 2025. He allegedly drove away with the money obtained from the victim’s phone and jewelry.
The child escaped the freeway and reached a nearby business, where employees called 911. LAPD officers reunited him with his family later that day.
Holguin was arrested on May 9, 2025.
The case remained pending for several months. Holguin was eventually arraigned on the original charges and entered a not-guilty plea before prosecutors later filed additional charges in a criminal information.
“The defendant, Brandon Holguin, will spend years in prison for his despicable acts of labor trafficking a child, making the child take an amphetamine so he could work all night and cutting off all communications with his family,” Hochman’s statement said.
The post California man sentenced after giving 14-year-old Adderall and forcing him to prepare hundreds of clothing items for online sale before abandoning him on a freeway first appeared on Law & Crime.