Inset: Brandon Holguin (Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office). Background: The North County Correctional Facility in Castaic, Calif. (Google Maps).
A California man is behind bars for his role in a drug-fueled child-labor plot where he forced a middle schooler to sell clothes online for hours at a time, law enforcement in the Golden State says.
Brandon Holguin, 26, stands accused of one count each of child stealing, human trafficking, child abuse under circumstances likely to cause great bodily injury or death, furnishing a minor a controlled substance, employing a minor during unauthorized hours, and false personation for a written instrument, according to a press release issued by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.
"Human labor traffickers frequently target vulnerable children, gaining their trust before isolating them and profiting from the child's forced labor," Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman said. "For three terrifying days, the victim's parents and law enforcement desperately searched for this missing teen, fearing the worst had happened."
The underlying incidents occurred in early May 2025 at a motel and other locations in Los Angeles County, authorities said.
The defendant allegedly targeted the 14-year-old at a thrift store several months before the trafficking, which began on May 2, 2025.
Then, with the victim in tow, Holguin allegedly drove to the motel where he put the victim to work "sorting and photographing used clothing items for online resale," according to prosecutors.
But the work was voluminous and cataloging the hundreds of clothing items continued well into the warm Southern California night, law enforcement said. And Holguin allegedly had a plan for that.
"He allegedly instructed the victim to ingest a controlled substance containing amphetamine commonly known as Adderall — which made the victim sick — so the victim could work late," prosecutors said.
At the beginning of the ordeal, the defendant kept the victim's cellphone in his possession, so the minor could not be contacted by his family, according to law enforcement. Then, Holguin allegedly told the minor they needed to get rid of the device so that he "could not be tracked by his mother." Finally, the defendant sold the phone and used a fake ID to pawn the victim's jewelry, pocketing hundreds of dollars, authorities said.
Holguin allegedly had other plans for the victim as well, authorities said. Namely, the defendant intended to traffic the boy hundreds of miles away into Northern California, law enforcement said.
When that plan fell through, however, Holguin left the minor "alone on the side of a Los Angeles freeway in the middle of the night" on May 5, 2025, "driving away with the proceeds of the sales of the victim's phone and jewelry," according to the district attorney's office.
The victim managed to make it off the freeway and sought refuge at a nearby business. There, the staff made a 911 call, and the boy was later that same day reunited with his family by the LAPD.
On May 9, 2025, Holguin was arrested.
Over the intervening months, he was arraigned on the initial charges and pleaded not guilty. Later, prosecutors filed additional charges by way of a criminal information.
On Wednesday, he was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to those additional charges, according to the district attorney's office.
Holguin is being detained on a $652,000 bond in the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic – an unincorporated community located some 40 miles northwest of the City of Los Angeles.
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