Sex trafficking victims testify crack dealer sold them to other men for sex in LI motel and kept the money

A fierce dependency on drugs and a fear of becoming "dopesick" led four Long Island women to take shelter in Suffolk motel rooms with a heroin and crack dealer who sold them to other men for sex and kept the proceeds for himself, they testified at his trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

Michael Johnson, 36, of Selbyville, Delaware, is on trial before U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert in Eastern District Court in Central Islip, where he is facing charges of sex trafficking conspiracy, sex trafficking and interstate prostitution. The prosecution is expected to rest its case Tuesday.

During three days of testimony last week, four women told the jury they were introduced to Johnson as someone to buy drugs from to feed their addictions to heroin and crack cocaine, eventually coming to purchase drugs from him multiple times per day. Once they came to depend on him to avoid withdrawal, he began to manipulate them in other ways, they told the seven women and five men who will soon begin deliberations in the case.

"I needed him. I needed what he had," said Kristina, a former Suffolk County resident who said she first ran drugs and guns for Johnson to support her habit before he started to advertise her for sexual services to other men at the room they shared at the Sayville Motor Lodge. "If I was with him every day, I wouldn't need anything. I wouldn't be sick."

"I was his dog," she said.

Kristina, who left the notorious motel in November 2018 after Suffolk police raided a room and arrested Johnson after receiving a tip from her mother, is one of three women identified by first name as victims of sex trafficking charges in the trial indictment.

Another alleged victim, Dawn, testified that she came to leave the motel with Johnson already behind bars in July 2019 after developing a bad infection in her right arm, where she had injected herself with heroin for several years.

"It was the day I decided I was going to die in this hotel room or get help," Dawn told the jury.

Eleven days later, her arm was amputated, she said from the witness stand, where she spoke of how her relationship with Johnson, who previously lived in Wyandanch, turned from one where he treated her with affection to later raping her and another girl in incidents inside the rooms they shared. Kristina said Johnson placed a gun inside her mouth and pulled the trigger during sex.

Dawn, who was already working as an escort alongside her sister when she began buying drugs from Johnson, and Kristina, who said she was only sold for sex by Johnson, both told the jury he kept the money from the times men visited their rooms to have sex with them.

The women said they feared for the safety of themselves and family members had they left Johnson, who they testified carried a gun.

Dawn said Johnson had about a half dozen women staying in rooms at the motel, whose owners previously pleaded guilty to sex trafficking conspiracy in the case. She said he told her the money he kept was for the drugs and food she consumed, but with her seeing as much as five men a day, the figures didn’t add up to her.

Two other women who testified for the prosecution, but are not named as victims in the indictment, said Johnson put them up in local motels when they faced homelessness. One of the women said she was 27 years old and had a falling out with a roommate before she called Johnson to say she was looking to purchase drugs from him one final time before checking into a rehab facility.

"He said he could help," the woman testified.

Johnson took her license and checked her into a hotel in Farmingville, she told the jury. He asked her to send him a sexy photo and he used it to advertise her online, she said. Three men came to visit her on the first night, according to her trial testimony.

Both women said they eventually ended up in Sayville. One of the women testified that she was thrown out of a previous hotel for stealing whipped cream from the lobby because she was so hungry while Johnson was withholding from her.

Both women told the jury they thought they would have to assist Johnson in his drug operation to pay for the rooms. They said they never discussed engaging in prostitution with him and that they believe he negotiated the rates with the men and kept the money.

Prosecutors said in a filing Friday that they do not expect to call the third woman identified as a victim of one of the trafficking and the interstate prostitution charges when the trial resumes Tuesday.

Samantha testified under a cooperation agreement related to a federal indictment on charges of distributing fentanyl. She told the jury Johnson brought the third woman to the Sayville Motor Lodge from Delaware on two occasions in 2021, after he was released from custody following a drug and weapons conviction related to the 2018 raid at the motel. The woman, who said she lived and worked as an escort at the motel for more than seven years, told the jury that Johnson had her help him traffic the Delaware woman. Prosecutors shared evidence of text messages, voice memos, social media posts and online advertisements to support those claims at trial.

She testified she worked independently and at times earned more than $8,000 per week at the motel. She said the owners of the motel, Narendarakuma and Shardaben Dadarwala, allowed prostitution on premises, where they treated the women "like family."

The witness told the jury the Dadarwalas alerted staff when law enforcement was on property and that almost every room was rented out for illicit activity.

"There was probably only one couple, I can think of, that stayed there that wasn't doing anything wrong," she testified.

Johnson’s defense team — attorneys Gary Kaufman, of Manhattan, and Nicholas Hine, of Brooklyn — have called into question the credibility of each of the witnesses to testify at trial, almost all of whom admitted their struggles with addiction and time spent engaged in sex work.

The defense has repeatedly pointed during cross examination to inconsistent timelines in their testimony or asked the women about their arrest histories, which in some cases include run-ins with the law after their time involving Johnson and the Sayville Motor Lodge. Kaufman underscored that for her testimony, the cooperating witness could be sentenced below the mandatory minimum of 5 years' incarceration in her fentanyl case.

The Town of Islip shut down the Sayville Motor Lodge following a federal raid in November 2022. The motel was sold for $2 million as part of the federal case in October 2023 and is slated for redevelopment by an unrelated company, court records show.

Former manager Ashokbhai Patel, 61, pleaded guilty to sex trafficking conspiracy last month.

Jigar Dadarwala, 47, the owners' son, also was charged in the conspiracy. He, along with Johnson and fellow alleged trafficker Timothy Bullen, 38, of Bay Shore, are the only defendants remaining in the current indictment.

Closing arguments at Johnson’s trial likely will be held Tuesday, prosecutors said.