Cleveland, OH
FBI Cleveland Shares Human Trafficking Awareness and Guidance
January 23, 2025
“Northern Ohio is not exempt from these dreadful crimes”
[Cleveland, OH] – January is Human Trafficking Prevention Month, a time to shed light and raise awareness in our communities about a prevalent crime that violates the most basic of human rights – freedom.
Human trafficking is the illegal exploitation of a person. Anyone can be a victim of human trafficking, and it can occur in any U.S. community—cities, suburbs, and even rural areas.
Human trafficking is the exploitation of human beings for profit. Whether it’s domestic servitude, forced labor, or sex trafficking of children and adults, it is a borderless crime without regard to who, what, or where the victims come from.
· As of July 15, 2024, the FBI has more than 1,660 pending human trafficking investigations, with cases in each of the FBI’s 56 field offices.
Over 93 percent of the FBI’s human-trafficking cases involved sex trafficking, with labor-trafficking investigations accounting for over six percent.
o These numbers may be misleading. Labor trafficking is traditionally harder to detect because the underlying labor—such as work performed in hair and nail salons, in restaurants, and by sanitation companies—is normally not illegal.
· In Fiscal Year (FY) 2023, the FBI initiated 664 human trafficking cases and conducted 145 federal arrests associated with human trafficking cases.
· Of the 145 federal arrests, 85 were for federal human trafficking crimes (e.g., violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1591 [sex trafficking of children] or § 1594 [conspiracy to sex traffic children]), and 60 were for other federal non-trafficking charges (e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 2422 [coercion and enticement of a minor] or § 2423(a) [transportation of minors], or a variety of other federal criminal violations, such as 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) [felon in possession of a weapon]).
· The FBI investigates all forms of human trafficking, regardless of the victim’s age or nationality.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Greg Nelsen
“Human trafficking is happening across the United States and worldwide, robbing victims of a peaceful life while degrading their existence to a world of dependence. Northern Ohio is not exempt from these dreadful crimes.”
The FBI works human trafficking cases under its Crimes Against Children and Human Trafficking program. Here in the United States, both U.S. residents and foreign nationals are being bought and sold like modern-day slaves. Traffickers use violence, manipulation, or false promises of well-paying jobs or romantic relationships to exploit victims. Victims are forced to work as prostitutes or to take jobs as migrant, domestic, restaurant, or factory workers with little or no pay. Human trafficking is a heinous crime that exploits the most vulnerable in society.
Nelsen added-
“The FBI is laser-focused on finding and identifying the perpetrators associated with human trafficking organizations and stands lockstep with its federal, state, and local partners to not only ensure the safe recovery of survivors, but also collaborate with trauma-informed service providers to protect survivors and connect them with the resources and support that they need and deserve,” Nelsen added.
Under the human trafficking program, the FBI investigates:
- Sex trafficking: When individuals are compelled by force, fraud, or coercion to engage in commercial sex acts. Sex trafficking of a minor occurs when the victim is under the age of 18. For cases involving minors, it is not necessary to prove force, fraud, or coercion.
- Labor trafficking: When individuals are compelled by force, threats, or fraud to perform labor or service.
- Domestic servitude: When individuals within a household appear to be nannies, housekeepers, or other types of domestic workers, but they are being controlled and exploited.
Indicators of Human Trafficking
· Individuals may be victims of human trafficking if:
o They work in the same place they live.
o They have poor living conditions.
o They let someone else speak for them or appear to be coached on what to say.
o They are not in possession of their own travel, immigration, or personal documents.
o There are locks on the outside of doors where they live, rather than inside.
o They have increasing debt.
o Their boss takes their pay.
o They pay their boss for food, clothing, and rent.
o They are not free to leave.
o Someone is always watching or guarding them.
o They are not free to contact family or friends.
o Their boss threatens them.
o They are lied to about the work they will be performing.
· Additional signs of sex trafficking, especially of minors, include:
o Frequent missing incidents or running away.
o Signs of sexual or physical abuse.
o Symptoms of neglect, such as malnourishment.
o Having unexplained hotel keys, prepaid cards, or items inconsistent with their socioeconomic status.
o Multiple hotel reservations under one name for an extended period of time with little or no luggage.
o Frequent absences from school or withdrawing from previously enjoyed activities.
o Abrupt disconnection from family and friends.
o Being overly frightened, annoyed, resistant, or belligerent to authority figures.
· Even if someone seems free to come and go as they please, they may still be a victim of human trafficking: the coercion to remain may be more psychological than physical.
o One indicator is whether the potential victim feels free to leave the situation.
o The potential victims may also be overly reliant on someone else for their physical and/or emotional needs.
· Human-trafficking victims are often subjected to debt bondage, in which traffickers demand labor to repay debt.
o Traffickers may charge the victims fees for housing, food, transportation, and other needs.
o They may levy interest and fines for missing daily work quotas.
o Traffickers may also charge for passage to the United States, then force workers into labor or sex trafficking once they arrive.
o Debt bondage traps a victim in a cycle of debt that can never be paid down, and it can be part of a larger scheme of psychological coercion.
Report Trafficking & Get Help
If you are a human trafficking victim or have information about a potential trafficking situation, call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) at 1-888-373-7888 or text 233733. NHTRC is a national, toll-free hotline, with specialists available to answer calls from anywhere in the country, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can also submit a tip on the NHTRC website.
If you believe a child is involved in a trafficking situation, submit a tip through the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline or call 1-800-THE-LOST. FBI personnel assigned to NCMEC review information that is provided to the CyberTipline.
Additional information can be found at Fbi.gov/humantrafficking
CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) – A man was killed Friday after being shot at a gas station on the city’s East side.
Cleveland police said they responded to the Sunoco in the 3300 block of E. 93rd St. around 8:30 p.m.
According to police, officers were in the area when they heard gunshots.
When officers arrived at the gas station, they found the victim with gunshot wounds.
Officers immediately began to provide first aid until EMS arrived and transported him to University Hospitals.
Carl Formby, 49, died from his injuries at the hospital.
Officers said they found two firearms and several casings at the scene.
The Cleveland Police Homicide Unit is investigating the incident.
Copyright 2026 WOIO. All rights reserved.
CLEVELAND, Ohio (TheOBR.com) Good morning, Cleveland Browns fans!
There are mornings when I sit down at this keyboard, look at the Browns quarterback discourse, and wonder whether I should have gone into a more stable line of work. Such as selling timeshares from inside an office that has been lit on fire. Because here we are in late June, with no pads, no preseason games, no live pass rush, and apparently everyone from television personalities to team-adjacent announcers to webdorks like me has solved the Browns quarterback battle. That’s 90% of the news items out there this morning.
But I don’t care, and look on that endless speculative churning as simply being noise at this point.
One story that matters this morning is Andrew Healy leaving Cleveland for Minnesota, which I wrote about several days ago. He’s joining the Vikings as an assistant general manager.
Let Barry know what you think of the Daily Bloviation! CLICK HERE!
If your first reaction was, “Okay, front-office guy changes jobs, wake me when someone throws a slant,” I get it. Executives mostly become famous when something goes wrong, which is a cruel system, but, hey, I didn’t design the planet. I just live here.
But Healy’s departure is a real loss. Alec Lewis’ Athletic reporting had two quotes that should get your attention. Browns offensive analyst Dom Borsani called Healy “a little bit like a unicorn,” because he combined research background and technical aptitude with a traditional scouting lens and an understanding of coaching schemes. Former Browns senior software developer Zach Zelinsky, now with the Arizona Diamondbacks, called him “probably the smartest guy I’ve worked with in sports.”
That’s not normal praise. That’s not “great teammate, first guy in, last guy out” boilerplate. This is people inside the machine saying the Browns just lost one of the people who helped connect the spreadsheet world to the football world. And that matters because the modern NFL is not analytics versus scouting anymore — or at least it shouldn’t be. The good organizations are the ones where the numbers people understand what the scouts are seeing, the scouts trust that the numbers can challenge their assumptions, and the coaches don’t throw the laptop into Lake Erie.
Healy’s Sloan Sports Analytics bio says that, for the last five years, he “led the integration of data and advanced insights into all parts of football operations.” It also says he started with the Browns in 2016 as Senior Player Personnel Strategist, helping to develop methods for valuing players, making game decisions, and evaluating draft assets. Before that, he created projection systems for Football Outsiders, and before that, he was an economics professor with a Ph.D. from MIT. So, yes, he is smarter than your humble webdork. This is not a high bar, but still.
So, naturally, I was worried about this and did what I always do when I’m looking for common-sense answers: I talked to Lane. He let me know what he “was told all the systems have been in place, with others handling the process. It doesn’t feel like they are overly concerned with his departure. As they have told me previously, you never like to lose assets, but you plan accordingly.”
The Browns still have Andrew Berry. They still have people in the research department. This is not a one-man shop collapsing because the smartest guy took his stapler to Minneapolis. But when you lose Paul DePodesta to the Rockies and Healy to the Vikings in the same general era, you lose institutional memory, decision-making frameworks, and the people who knew why certain models were built the way they were. Don’t expect the loss of the two to indicate much about how the Browns use analytics – it hasn’t fallen out of favor or suddenly joined Maurice Carthon’s playbook in the annals of football history.
This is the type of stuff fans don’t see until two years later, when the draft board feels different, the fourth-down decisions get twitchy, or the team suddenly stops finding value in places it used to find value. Maybe Berry replaces that brainpower cleanly. Maybe the remaining group steps forward. Maybe the Browns are fine. But losing a “unicorn” from a front office is like losing a left guard: nobody talks about it until the pressure starts coming up the middle.
Have a good one! GO BROWNS!
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THE WATERCOOLER
THE LIFT
Positive news from the world of sports and beyond…
Space.com reports that scientists are drawing up a research blueprint to examine whether warming Mars is actually feasible — not because anyone should be selling lakefront property in Olympus Mons by Thursday, but because the work could help humanity understand what sustainable habitats beyond Earth would require. University of Chicago geophysical scientist Edwin Kite told Space.com, “We do not yet know enough to create a biosphere from scratch,” which is both humbling and oddly comforting. We can’t even get everyone to agree on the Browns quarterback depth chart, but sure, let’s keep the option open for Mars.
WRAPPING UP
When not trying to identify the precise moment quarterback analysis becomes interpretive dance, Barry McBride is the Publisher and Founder of the OBR and bloviates this nonsense every morning. You can follow him on Twitter @barrymcbride or write him at barry@theobr.com if you are so compelled.
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Copyright 2026 WOIO via TheOBR.com. All rights reserved.
Three people are dead after a double murder-suicide in Lakewood.
Police said a man called his ex-wife early Sunday morning, saying he shot two people at a home on Chesterland Avenue.
According to investigators, the man threatened to shoot himself.
When officers arrived at the scene, they saw a man in a truck speeding away.
Police chased the truck until it stopped on Warren Road.
The 45-year-old man exited the vehicle with a gun to his head and shot himself moments later, police said.
Police found 35-year-old Richard Eastin and 33-year-old Amanda Wakut dead inside the kitchen of the home on Chesterland Avenue.
The investigation is ongoing.
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