Dallas man convicted of sex trafficking faces life in prison

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - A Dallas man pleaded guilty on May 10, 2022 to running a sex trafficking ring for nearly two decades and now faces spending the rest of his life in federal prison.

Anthony Johnson, 45, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking through force, fraud, and coercion and sex trafficking on May 10, narrowly avoiding his trial, which was scheduled to begin that day.

According to plea papers, Johnson, also known as "Macc Bucc," admitted he forced multiple women to engage in commercial sex acts and turn the proceeds over to him. He set "quotas," compelled the women to work for hours on end, and brutally beat them with an extension cord when they came up short, "disrespected" him, or did not follow his rules.

Johnson also coerced the women into stealing from commercial sex customers, instructing them to rifle through customers' pockets for cash or jewelry and to check their cars for valuables.

One woman, identified in court papers as "Adult Victim 7," endured his abuse for several years. Throughout that time, she was forced to travel cross-country to engage in commercial sex and was routinely beaten when she tried to leave the organization.

In a pretrial filing, prosecutors indicated they were prepared to introduce into evidence a 911 call placed by a different victim's mother after her daughter called her in tears from a passerby's phone. 

"She said, 'mamma, I wanna come home, they won't let me come home,' she said, 'they got everything I got,'" the woman told the dispatcher. "'Mamma, he got me by gunpoint, he's got these girls following me, he beat me up real bad.'"

In another filing, prosecutors suggested they were planning to introduce evidence that Johnson used a contraband cell phone while in jail awaiting trial to continue running his organization. According to prosecutors, text messages obtained from the cell phone showed that Johnson continued to instruct women where to work, which hotels to use, how to steal from customers, and when they could finish work for the night.

In plea papers, Johnson admitted that he previously ran his trafficking organization from behind bars between 2014 and 2019 while incarcerated following a conviction for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Johnson's second-in-command, Demetrice Deckard, pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to engage in trafficking through force, fraud, and coercion and faces up to life in federal prison. 

Another co-defendant, Ashley Neice, pled guilty to conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and admitted to conspiring with Johnson to contact a victim in the criminal case in order to tell her not to cooperate with law enforcement. Neice faces up to 20 years in federal prison.

"Those attempting to profit from commercial sex through the viciousness of human trafficking are causing significant harm in our communities," said Acting Special Agent in Charge of HSI Dallas Christopher Miller. "This defendant's guilty plea moves one step closer to finding justice for the victims he brutalized and manipulated."