DESOTO, Texas — A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Texas has returned an eight-count superseding indictment against Felix Omoruyi, 39, of DeSoto, charging him with sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, sex trafficking of a minor, and related offences, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Thursday, November 5. A superseding indictment replaces and expands an earlier indictment: Omoruyi was first indicted and arrested in November 2025, and prosecutors now allege both a trafficking operation that ran for roughly 18 years and attempts, after his arrest, to destroy evidence and interfere with his own prosecution.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Nov. 5, 2026
According to the court documents described by the Justice Department, from December 2007 through November 2025 Omoruyi allegedly compelled five adult women to perform commercial sex acts in Texas and elsewhere for his financial benefit. Prosecutors allege he trafficked one of those women beginning when she was a minor. No victim is named or identified in the indictment announcement, and Awaaz Punjab does not identify trafficking victims. Every element of this account is an allegation: an indictment is not evidence of guilt, and Omoruyi is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
Source: Peoples Gazette, via Rifnote, Nov. 5, 2026
The charges, count by count in plain language
The eight-count superseding indictment charges Omoruyi with sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; sex trafficking of a minor; attempt to destroy, alter or conceal a document or object; and obstruction and interference with the enforcement of the federal sex-trafficking statute. In federal law, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion means compelling a person to perform commercial sex acts through physical force, threats, deception or coercion — it does not require that a victim was moved across a state or national border, which is why a case centred on one Dallas suburb can still be a federal trafficking case.
Arrested in 2025 — then, prosecutors say, he tried to reach the witnesses
The obstruction allegations are what make this indictment new. Prosecutors say that after Omoruyi was arrested on the initial indictment in November 2025, he corruptly attempted to destroy evidence and to obstruct and interfere with his prosecution by contacting victims and witnesses to influence their statements and testimony. Witness-tampering allegations of this kind matter in trafficking cases because victims and witnesses are often the prosecution's central evidence, and courts treat alleged interference with them as a serious, separate crime on top of the trafficking counts themselves.
Why a Texas case is run out of New England
The announcement was made jointly by Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Ryan R. Raybould for the Northern District of Texas, and Acting Special Agent in Charge Jeffrey A. Grimming of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New England. The investigating office is HSI New England, assisted by HSI Dallas and the Barnstable Police Department — Barnstable is a town on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. That geography matches the indictment's own wording that the alleged conduct happened "in Texas and elsewhere": the investigation visibly reaches from DeSoto, a suburb on the southern edge of Dallas, to Massachusetts. Trial Attorney Matthew Thiman of the Criminal Division's Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandie Wade for the Northern District of Texas are prosecuting the case.
The Justice Department asks anyone with information about human trafficking to call the National Human Trafficking Hotline, toll-free at 1-888-373-7888, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week (humantraffickinghotline.org). Trafficking victims do not have to be foreign nationals, and needing help does not depend on immigration status — advocates, not enforcement officers, answer the hotline.
Background: how federal trafficking prosecutions work
Federal sex-trafficking law carries some of the heaviest penalties in the U.S. code. If convicted of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, Omoruyi faces a minimum of 15 years in prison and a maximum of life, along with mandatory restitution — court-ordered payments to victims that are required, not optional, on a trafficking conviction. Cases are usually built over years by HSI, the Department of Homeland Security's investigative arm, working with local police, exactly the pattern this indictment shows: a 2025 arrest on an initial indictment, followed by a wider superseding indictment a year later as investigators added the obstruction allegations.
What happens next
The case now moves forward in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where Omoruyi will be arraigned on the superseding indictment and a trial schedule set; no court date was given in Thursday's announcement. For readers in the Dallas–Fort Worth Punjabi community — and for newcomer families across the diaspora — the case is a reminder that trafficking in the United States is usually hidden in ordinary suburbs and ordinary industries, that its victims can be of any background, and that a confidential hotline exists precisely so that a neighbour, a co-worker or a truck-stop employee who sees something can report it without becoming part of the case. Awaaz Punjab will follow the court proceedings.