1,500 men a year for ‘slave’ gals
The probe that led to prostitution charges against New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft targeted massage parlors where women lived like slaves — and serviced an average of eight clients a day, according to Florida authorities.
“If you do the math, that is about 1,500 men a year, with no days off,” Martin County Sheriff William Snyder said.
Snyder said the women had to endure grueling living conditions as part of their employment, according to a report by WPTV.
“They were cooking on the back steps of the business,” he said.
“These women were sleeping in massage parlors, on the massage tables and had no access to transportation.”
Officials suspect the women in the parlors were trafficked from China to New York and then to the Sunshine State, Snyder said. They’re being treated as victims and won’t be identified, according to CBS12.
Investigators seized between $2 million and $3 million worth of assets and were planning to arrest about 100 men on charges of soliciting sex as part of the multiagency investigation, Snyder said during a news conference Tuesday.
Two women — Hua Zhang, 58, of Winter Garden, and Lei Wang, 39, of Hobe Sound — were arrested on charges they ran the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, where Kraft was allegedly twice caught on video engaging in paid sex acts.
The owner of a nearby Goodfella’s Pizza told Reuters that he frequently saw young women who worked at the massage parlor walking through the shopping plaza where it’s located.
“They looked miserable, malnourished, very skinny, very pale with a depressed look on their face,” added Joseph Bompartito, 33.
A worker at the Sherban Spine Institute next door to the massage parlor told Treasure Coast Newspapers that the business kept unusual hours until it was raided Tuesday morning.
“You hear that this stuff happens, but right next door to where you work?” medical assistant Stephanie Lewandowski said.
Court papers detail covert, 24-hour video surveillance by the Jupiter PD outside the parlor from Nov. 6 to Nov. 14 of last year.
“Each day, the business opened at approximately 9 a.m. and did not close until approximately 10:30 or 11:30 p.m. Each client who entered the business was male and would stay an average of 30-45 minutes,” the papers say.
On Nov. 14, a Health Department inspector found three women who appeared to be living inside the massage parlor, and cops seized evidence of sex acts from the business’s trash bin, according to the affidavit.
Two other women — Ruimei Li, 48, of Jupiter, and Lixia Zhu, 48, of Stuart — were also arrested Tuesday on charges including racketeering and money laundering, according to Treasure Coast Newspapers.