Police serve MTV rapper warrant in sex trafficking probe

A rapper who came to prominence through a reality television show used his social media following to recruit sex workers, police said following Kevin Lamont Barnes Jr.’s arrest in Linthicum to face a Las Vegas sex trafficking charge.

The Anne Arundel County Police Department said Barnes, 37, was arrested April 14 at a hotel near BWI Marshall Airport. He was served with a Nevada warrant on a felony count stemming from his phone conversations with an undercover vice detective, who in an arrest report wrote that Barnes bragged about the number of women he claimed he employed as sex workers in multiple states.

Barnes referred to himself as a pimp and tried to recruit the undercover vice officer as a sex worker during a series of March 30 phone calls in which he also demanded she meet him at an airport, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department detectives wrote in the arrest report.

In a post on Twitter, Anne Arundel County Police said there may be local victims affiliated with Barnes. No Maryland charges were filed against Barnes as of Thursday.

Barnes, a rapper who starred in an MTV showed called “Making the Band” using the stage name “Chopper Young City,” was held at Jennifer Road Detention Center until he waived an extradition hearing and was brought to Las Vegas last week, court records show. In an appearance at Las Vegas Justice Court on Tuesday, a judge allowed

Barnes to be released pending his next hearing May 10.

The Clark County, Nevada, Public Defender’s Office, which is representing Barnes, did not return requests for comment, nor did the operator of an email address listed on Barnes’ Instagram account.

The Las Vegas arrest report states that police started investigating Barnes on March 29 when he sent direct messages over social media to an undercover officer, who interpreted the message as a signal for recruiting sex workers, noting that the rapper had made “numerous posts related to the prostitution lifestyle” on his Instagram page.

The report states that Barnes and the undercover officer exchanged messages in which Barnes said he was “hitting cities” and he traveled frequently, before Barnes called and held a “phone interview” in which police said he recruited the officer to work for him as a prostitute, repeatedly demanding she fly to Charlotte, North Carolina, to meet him at the airport.

When the undercover officer didn’t answer Barnes’ calls, he became irate and threatened to have his associates in Las Vegas retaliate against her if she didn’t pay him a “fee” of $2,000, the report states.

In Nevada, Barnes faces a felony charge of sex trafficking of an adult.

Those with information on potential victims in Anne Arundel are asked to contact the county police’s TipLine at 410-222-4700.