Siblings lure businessman to home and hold him for $400,000 ransom in Illinois, feds say
A brother and sister from Illinois were sentenced to prison after officials said they kidnapped a local businessman and held him for ransom.
Ademeko Maclin-Carney, 26, was sentenced to 30 years in prison, and Ausarian Carney, 23, was sentenced to 24 years in prison, according to a March 7 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of Illinois.
McClatchy News reached out to the attorneys for Maclin-Carney and Carney but did not immediately hear back.
On March 24, 2022, Maclin-Carney lured the businessman to an abandoned home in Decatur by telling him that she needed an estimate for flooring in the home, prosecutors said.
When the man got to the home, Maclin-Carney pepper-sprayed him as he was taking a measurement, officials said. Then, her brother, Carney, came into the room, pressed a gun into him and told him it would be a “very bad day,” according to prosecutors.
Carney ordered the man on the ground then zip-tied his hands, put duct tape on his face and a bag over his head, officials said.
The siblings then told the man they wanted $400,000 for his release or they would kill him, prosecutors said.
The two moved the man to different locations and told him to make a ransom call to his wife at the family business, according to officials.
The man told his wife not to call authorities, but she called 911, and the police department began an investigation, prosecutors said.
When the siblings went to the family’s business and saw police, they moved the man again and eventually left him in the back of a van, on a bed of broken glass, zip-tied, with a bag over his head, officials said.
The man was able to break free of the zip ties, and he ran to a nearby business to get help.
Police found his car in an alleyway, and inside was a notebook with traces of pepper spray on it, as well as the siblings’ fingerprints, officials said.
Police searched the home where the man was kidnapped from and found additional evidence, prosecutors said.
“A variety of forensic evidence, including fingerprints, DNA, business video footage, trace fiber evidence, and cellular location data all demonstrated that the siblings perpetrated the kidnapping,” officials said.
The two were convicted of kidnapping on Oct. 11, 2024.
During sentencing, a judge said Maclin-Carney was the “leader of the kidnapping” and had done research on the man, his family and the business, officials said.
“The court also noted that Maclin-Carney had researched the penalty for ‘third-degree murder’ in the leadup to the kidnapping. After her arrest, Maclin-Carney also took steps while in pretrial detention both to prevent the victims from testifying against her, and to manufacture an alibi through false testimony about her own and her brother’s whereabouts during the kidnapping,” according to prosecutors.
However, the judge said “Carney was still the gunman and the muscle” and had been “in every way, a partner to his sister’s crime, had pressed the firearm into the victim multiple times to force his compliance, and like his sister, never expressed regret or remorse for his actions.”
“The defendants’ violent kidnapping of the victim in this case shows their avarice for ill-gotten gains at any cost, including the terror they inflicted on the victim and his family,” Acting U.S. Attorney Gregory M. Gilmore said.
Decatur is in central Illinois, about 180-mile drive southwest of Chicago.
This story was originally published March 10, 2025 at 12:54 PM with the headline "Siblings lure businessman to home and hold him for $400,000 ransom in Illinois, feds say."
