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 several years in prison for his role in a drug-fueled child-labor scheme that forced a 14-year-old middle school student to spend hours preparing clothing for online sales.
Brandon Holguin, 26, pleaded no contest earlier this week to one count each of labor trafficking, child abuse under circumstances 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.
Holguin was sentenced to five years in state prison and ordered to pay $4,300 in restitution for depriving the victim of his 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 alleged abuse took place in May 2025 at a motel and other locations in Los Angeles County, Law&Crime previously reported.
Holguin first met the 14-year-old at a thrift store several months before the trafficking began on May 2, 2025.
With the boy accompanying him, Holguin drove to a motel and made him sort and photograph used clothing for resale online, prosecutors said.
The volume of work was substantial, and the teenager continued cataloging hundreds of garments late into the warm Southern California night, according to authorities. Prosecutors said Holguin’s answer was to give him Adderall.
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According to earlier court filings, Holguin instructed the victim to take an amphetamine-based controlled substance commonly known as Adderall. The drug made the boy sick, prosecutors said, but Holguin allegedly gave it to him so he could continue working late into the night.
At the outset of the ordeal, Holguin kept the middle schooler’s cellphone, preventing the boy’s family from contacting him. He later told the victim they needed to dispose of the phone so that the boy’s mother “could not be tracked.” Holguin then sold the device and used a fake identification document to pawn the victim’s jewelry, taking hundreds of dollars, authorities said.
Authorities also said Holguin planned to traffic the boy hundreds of miles away to Northern California.
When that plan did not materialize, Holguin allegedly abandoned the teenager alone beside a Los Angeles freeway in the middle of the night on May 5, 2025. He drove away with money from the sale of the victim’s phone and jewelry, according to the district attorney’s office.
The boy managed to leave the freeway and sought help at a nearby business. Employees called 911, and LAPD officers reunited him with his family later that day.
Holguin was arrested on May 9, 2025.
The case took several months to advance. Holguin was eventually arraigned on the initial charges and pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors later added 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 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 beside a freeway first appeared on Law & Crime.
