Michael Johnson sex trafficking trial: Prosecutor says he forced women into sex work with drugs

The Sayville Motor Lodge was a "hub for violence, exploitation and human suffering," where traffickers sold drugs and sex with women they controlled and were granted refuge from law enforcement by the motel’s owners and staff, a federal prosecutor argued Tuesday in the first trial resulting from the investigation that shuttered the infamous motel’s doors in 2022.

Defendant Michael Johnson, 36, of Selbyville, Delaware, controlled women by supplying them with drugs and forcing them into sex work, Assistant U.S. Attorney Catherine Mirabile told the jury seated in Central Islip at the start of Johnson's trial before U.S. District Court Judge Joanna Seybert on charges of sex trafficking conspiracy, sex trafficking and interstate prostitution.

"Behind [the motel’s] doors, in its rundown rooms ... women were brutally and violently trafficked," Mirabile told the jury in her opening statement. "Their bodies sold for sex, their lives controlled for profit, and one of the most ruthless and violent pimps was the defendant, Michael Johnson."

But defense attorney Nicholas Hine, of Brooklyn, argued that while the evidence expected to be presented at trial will show the Sayville Motor Lodge was a "bad place," prosecutors will fail to prove his client engaged in a sex trafficking conspiracy. Hine pointed to a November 2018 state case in which Johnson pleaded guilty to drug and gun charges following his arrest at the motel but was not accused of sex-related crimes as an indication he did not traffic women.

"Mr. Johnson was not a pimp," said Hine, who is defending him with attorney Gary Kaufman, of Manhattan. "He sold drugs to sex workers."

Both sides agreed in their opening arguments that Johnson ended up at the Sayville Motor Lodge because it was a place where owners Narendarakuma and Shardaben Dadarwala rented rooms to people engaged in illicit activity.

For Johnson, the women were customers who lived and worked out of the motel, Hine said. For the Dadarwalas, sex workers and the men who allegedly controlled them were a financial lifeline whom they would tip off when law enforcement entered the property, Mirabile said.

"The only real business being done at the Sayville Motor Lodge, and certainly the only business being done by [Johnson], was criminal business," said Mirabile, who is trying the case with colleagues Samantha Alessi and Anthony Bagnoula. "Everyone profited, except the victims. [Johnson and others] made money off the women they trafficked, and the owners made money off renting rooms that made these crimes possible and profitable."

The Dadarwalas, who were also arrested when federal authorities raided the motel and have since pleaded guilty to sex trafficking conspiracy, alerted the women residing at the hotel to men who arrived looking for sex, sold condoms to guests and often allowed late payments for extra cash if the women had future dates lined up, prosecutors said.

One woman, identified in court as Danielle, testified to the 30-room Sunrise Highway motel’s policies and practices when she took the stand as the first witness in the case Tuesday. Danielle, now 41, said she lived at the motel for several years beginning around 2015.

An Army veteran who became addicted to opioids following a service injury, Danielle told the jury she arrived at the motel with her sister after they began to engage in sex work to support their heroin habits. The sister, identified in court as Dawn, was later brought under the control of Johnson, whom the women initially bought drugs from, Danielle testified.

Danielle said her sister later moved into a neighboring room with Johnson, who introduced her to cocaine, ecstasy and other drugs, and brought other women to the motel to work alongside Dawn. Johnson raped Dawn, moved her to a different hotel, and prevented her from having contact with her sister, Danielle told the jury.

When Dawn became too withdrawn from her drug addiction to have sex, Danielle did jobs for her. Johnson kept the money, she testified.

"I loved my sister and I didn’t want to see anything happen to her," said Danielle, who testified that Johnson always carried a gun and was often violent with her sister.

Hine disputed Danielle's account of her sister working for Johnson, saying it was Danielle who advertised Dawn's services online. She told the jury she did that for Dawn and other sex workers at the motel because she was the most technologically savvy of the bunch and not because she profited from them.

Danielle said the Dadarwalas, who are both in their 70s and were called Ma and Pa for the ways they looked out for the women at the motel, lived in a second-floor apartment above the lobby and were present for all of the illicit activity.

"They never left," she said.

Mirabile told the jury they will also hear testimony about two additional sex workers who were controlled by Johnson at the motel. One is expected to explain how Johnson put a gun inside her mouth during sex, the prosecutor said. The other was brought to Long Island from Delaware and forced into prostitution by Johnson, the prosecutor said. Both women were addicted to heroin, she added.

He "used threats, used violence, used manipulation, all to keep these women in line, working for his profit and profit for the owners of the motel for forcing women to have sex against their will for money," Mirabile said.

The prosecutor also said the Dadarwalas and their staff allowed Johnson, and a second alleged trafficker whose case is still pending, to operate at the motel while removing from the property other sex workers whose activity was a threat to their business.

Among those tactics was providing his alleged victims with drugs and then withholding from them.

Hine disputed those allegations in his own opening remarks, pointing to how when his client was arrested, one of the witnesses in the case was alone inside a room she shared with Johnson with easy access to drugs. The defense attorney dismissed the women’s expected testimony as the type of story someone tells themself "in order to live."

"Is it easier to move on from the most horrible part of your life when you blame it on someone else?" Hine told the jury to ask themselves. "Of course it is."

The Town of Islip shut the Sayville Motor Lodge down following the federal raid in November 2022. Former manager Ashokbhai Patel, 61, pleaded guilty to sex trafficking conspiracy last month.

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

The younger Dadarwala and Patel often abused the women living at the motel and would proposition them for sex, Danielle testified.

Danielle testified that Bullen was the leading trafficker at the motel. She said both he and Johnson consistently rented multiple rooms at the motel, keeping multiple women in each. 

The defense has argued that Bullen and Johnson did not know each other and are not part of a single conspiracy, something the judge ruled in pretrial hearings that the jury will have to decide.

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. 

Testimony is expected to continue Wednesday.

By Grant Parpan

grant.parpan@newsday.com@GrantParpan

Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County courts and federal courts for Newsday. A Long Island native, he joined Newsday in 2022.