On September 24, 2019, Willie Dishon Matthew Obadiah, 32, of Charlotte, North Carolina, pled guilty to sex trafficking of a minor, before U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami.
In February 2019, Obadiah met the minor victim through Facebook, and communicated with her via Facebook Messenger and text messages. At the time, both Obadiah and the minor victim lived in North Carolina, where he was already prostituting women. Through his communications with the victim, Obadiah learned that she was a minor. In fact, he asked her to send a photograph of her identification card to him. When he saw her age on the photograph, he sent her a message stating that he wished she had a “fake id” instead. Obadiah continued to communicate with the minor victim online, and learned that she was a runaway. While she was on the run, Obadiah agreed to pick up the minor victim. Shortly thereafter, he began prostituting the minor victim at various hotels, initially in North Carolina and then in Miami.
According to documents, the victim said was told by the suspect he was only taking her to Miami, “where she would just smoke and walk on the beach.”
Obadiah told the minor victim how much to charge for sex acts, how to deal with customers or “johns,” and what rules to abide by. Obadiah posted advertisements online for the minor victim, to which customers responded. Obadiah drove the minor victim to South Florida after a few days, where he prostituted her at hotels in Miami. The minor victim ran away from Obadiah, but was later kidnapped by him again.
The suspect the took her to South Beach to stay with the other females who’d traveled with them from North Carolina.
When the teen told the other females she was only 17 and that Obadiah assaulted her, the other females “drove her to a relative’s home in the Miami area and left her there,” according to the Charlotte Observer.
Obadiah returned to North Carolina, where he continued to prostitute women. He was arrested on April 19, 2019 by the Charlotte-Mecklenberg Police Department.
Obadiah is scheduled to be sentenced on December 5, 2019, at 9:00 a.m. in Miami, before Judge Bloom (Case No. 19-cr-20321). He faces a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment of ten years and a statutory sentence of up to life in prison.
