District Man Sentenced to 7 Years in Prison for Armed Kidnapping

Victim Held in Trunk of Car During Kidnapping

           WASHINGTON – Ethan Moye-Gordon, 23, of Maryland, was sentenced yesterday to 84 months in prison for his participation in an armed kidnapping and robbery that began in the District of Columbia and continued into Maryland.

           U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu, Timothy M. Dunham, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Washington Field Office, Criminal Division, Chief Peter Newsham, Metropolitan Police Department, and Chief Henry P. Stawinski, Prince George’s County Police Department made the announcement.

           The defendant entered a guilty plea in July of 2019, before the Honorable Judge Amy Berman Jackson. In addition to the period of incarceration, Judge Jackson imposed a 60-month period of supervised release and required the defendant to complete 250 hours of community service.

           According to the government’s evidence, late in the evening on November 10, 2018, and into the early morning hours of November 11, 2018, Moye-Gordon, along with two other men, abducted the victim at gunpoint near Logan Circle and forced the victim into their vehicle.  The victim had been in Washington to attend the annual meeting of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer at the Convention Center.

           During the course of the abduction, the victim was forced into the trunk of the defendant’s vehicle; he ultimately was able to pull the latch in the trunk and attempted to escape, but was unable to obtain help before he was recaptured by his captors and forced back into the vehicle.

           During the abduction, Moye-Gordon and his associates forced the victim at gunpoint to provide his ATM PIN code and made physical withdrawals from numerous ATMs in D.C. and Maryland.  Moye-Gordon and his associates also withdrew funds from the victim’s accounts using online banking applications on the victim’s phone.

           In a statement provided to the court, the victim advised that “words cannot convey the horror and the shock I experienced” during the kidnapping. The victim praised everyone who worked on the case and “diligently assembled evidence and facts, and then diligently and expertly conducted their criminal case and investigation.”

           This matter was investigated by the Washington Field Office’s Violent Crime Task Force, which is composed of FBI Special Agents, along with Detectives of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, and the U.S. Capitol Police, in conjunction with the Prince George’s County Police. This task force, working with local, state and federal partners, is charged with investigating and arresting the most egregious and violent criminal actors within the Capital Region.  

           In announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney Liu, Special Agent in Charge Dunham, Chief Newsham, and Chief Stawinski commended the work of the FBI Agents, MPD officers, Prince George’s County police officers, and Arlington County police officers who investigated the armed kidnapping. They also acknowledged the efforts of those who worked on the case from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, including Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Crane, former Assistant United States Attorney Jillian Willis, Paralegal Specialist Rommel, and Legal Assistant Peter Gaboton.