The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is asking victims to come forward after two truck drivers were arrested in connection with a kidnapping for ransom scheme.
On Wednesday, the FBI’s Memphis Field Office announced that two over the road truck drivers had been arrested. The FBI says that the truck drivers engaged in a plot to “kidnap females and demand ransom of the females for their release.”
Twenty-five year old North Carolina-based truck driver Brian T. Summerson was arrested in Daytona Beach, Florida, for Battery Cause Bodily Harm, False Imprisonment, and Tampering with a Witness Calling 911. The FBI says that Summerson is an over the road trucker with a primary route of I-95 from New Jersey to Miami, as well as Chicago, Illinois, and Kansas City, Missouri. The agency says that “when meeting potential victims, he tells them his name is Von or Vaughn.”
The victims are believed to have been kidnapped along Summerson’s route.
Thirty-five year old Illinois resident Pierre L. Washington was also arrested in Chicago in March 2021. The FBI says that Washington owns the trucking company, God Got Me LLC. and works as an OTR truck driver, but his route is unknown.
The FBI says that the investigation into the kidnapping scheme is ongoing because of the discovery of “photographs, videos and text communications of additional women on Summerson’s electronic devices and electronic accounts.”
The FBI is asking anyone who was a victim in the scheme to contact them at [email protected].