A federal jury in Los Angeles found three Sacramento men guilty Wednesday of kidnapping and robbing a Lancaster businessman who was snatched from his own workplace in October 2023, driven to a desolate stretch of the Antelope Valley, beaten, and threatened with death unless he handed over more than $100,000 in cash, gold, and jewelry. Jerome “Rome” Franklin, Andrae “Plates” Hawkins, and De'Andre Lamont King now face the possibility of life in federal prison when they are sentenced in November.
The verdicts capped a seven-day trial in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, according to the Department of Justice. Franklin, 45, Hawkins, 41, and King, 31, were each convicted of one count of kidnapping and one count of Hobbs Act robbery, along with conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery. As CBS News Los Angeles reported, the jury acquitted all three men of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and of brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence.
Federal grand jury documents unsealed in September 2024 laid out just how menacing the October 27, 2023 attack was. According to the earlier indictment, the kidnappers abducted the victim at gunpoint, beat him, and duct-taped his own turban over his face before telling him, “This is your last day,” while demanding more than $100,000 in cash, gold, and jewelry. The station's report on the trial notes the suspects also restrained the victim's hands behind his back with zip ties and abandoned him in a desolate area once the ordeal was over.
A Coordinated Crew Crossed Half the State
The three men had driven from Sacramento to Lancaster specifically to pull off the abduction, per the same account from CBS News Los Angeles. That's no short trip — the drive between Sacramento and Lancaster covers roughly 360 miles and takes five to six hours across California, according to Wanderlog. While the victim was being held, some of the defendants went to his home, where his wife spotted them on her home security system and tried unsuccessfully to reach her husband by phone, the outlet reported. The suspects also ended up in possession of the victim's phone during the ordeal.
The case traces back to a federal grand jury indictment unsealed in September 2024, when three co-defendants were arrested in Northern California while a fourth, Franklin, remained a fugitive at large, according to the Department of Justice. Franklin was later taken into custody before the trial began. Hoodline previously covered the initial indictment and Franklin's fugitive status at the time.
Two Co-Defendants Already Locked In Guilty Pleas
The trio convicted this week were not the only members of the alleged Sacramento crew. Shanjeet Brar, 59, who rented one of the two vehicles used during the incident, pleaded guilty in September 2025 to one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and one count of kidnapping, and is now awaiting sentencing, per the DOJ release. Peter Arafiles Jr., 31, also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnapping in September 2025 and is currently serving a 10-year federal prison sentence. With Wednesday's verdicts, all five men allegedly involved in the scheme have now been convicted in federal court.
Following their arrests in Northern California in August 2024, Brar, Arafiles, and Hawkins made their initial appearances in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, where a federal magistrate judge ordered them detained without bail, according to court records reviewed by PacerMonitor. The case was later transferred to Los Angeles for trial, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Los Angeles Field Office worked the investigation alongside regional law enforcement partners, per the DOJ.
Case Fits Into Broader Federal Crackdown
Prosecutors brought the charges under Operation Safe Cities, a Department of Justice initiative launched in March 2024 to target violent robbery crews, extortion, and firearm offenses across Southern California. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California, which led the prosecution, oversees federal law enforcement across seven counties serving nearly 20 million residents — Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo — making it the most populous federal district in the country, per the DOJ.
Federal jurisdiction over the robbery counts stems from the Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951, which lets federal prosecutors pursue commercial robberies that interfere with interstate commerce and carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison per count, as Hoodline has previously reported. Notably, the jury's acquittal on the firearm brandishing charge under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) removed what would have been a mandatory, consecutive seven-year sentence on top of any other prison term. Even without that enhancement, Franklin, Hawkins, and King still face statutory maximum sentences of up to life in federal prison on the kidnapping and Hobbs Act robbery counts alone, according to the DOJ. All three are due back in court for sentencing on November 5.
