USA TODAY International Edition
Sex traffic rolls past spa stings
Crackdowns rarely result in downfall of the powers that profit from degradation
“She is pretty open with what she offers from the get go and thus I ask her to skip the massage and we got to business.” A review of Bonita Spa in Hollywood, Fla., on Rubmaps, a Yelp for massage parlors
Within hours of a police raid of Miami Beach massage parlors in 2017, Chief Daniel Oates stood before TV cameras praising his agency’s eight-month effort to crack down on prostitution and human trafficking. Officers had detained 10 Asian women and, through interpreters, tried to determine which of them were victims and which were perpetrators. The city, he said, had shut down four brothels posing as spas. “Obviously, the message to these kinds of operations is that they won’t be tolerated in our town,” Oates said. Even before the news conference started, however, the case had begun to fall apart. Some sex workers – potential witnesses against the organizers – were gone. One of the spas would avoid being shut down altogether. The one person charged with trafficking in the case was allowed to plead guilty to profiting from prostitution, a lesser charge.
Police tout sex spa stings as evidence that they are cracking down on rampant human trafficking. Publicity hit a high in February in Florida raids that led to charges against New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who police said was caught paying for sex acts.
But a USA TODAY review of three high-profile raids – the one in Miami Beach and others in nearby Hollywood and Southwest Florida – found that law enforcement’s tough-on-trafficking rhetoric fizzled after initial headlines. Charges were dropped or pleaded down. Spas often popped up in the same or new locations. And any notion of going after higher-ups who profit from trafficking, including international crime figures bringing women from overseas, never materialized.
“Almost every local law enforcement that does one of these cases, the quote usually is, ‘We think we’re getting the tip of the iceberg,’ ” said Brad Myles, CEO of Polaris, a nonprofit group that operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline. “How many icebergs are there? I don’t know if anyone has a really good handle on who the masterminds are.”
Polaris estimated that 9,000 illicit massage parlors operate in the USA based on reviews on Rubmaps, a Yelp for sex spas, bringing in about $2.5 billion a year.
Hints of a broader organization not touched by law enforcement hover beneath the surface. Through a search of thousands of public records ranging from corporate filings to massage licenses, USA TODAY found connections among more than a third of the 41 spas raided in the three recent operations, and links from them to a larger network of potentially suspect massage parlors all over the state.
Prosecutors noted that a felony trafficking charge is just one tool in their toolbox. Because of the difficulty of getting victims to cooperate, they can look to alternatives that do not require proof that a victim was coerced, such as racketeering or money laundering. “I think much bigger and broader than just that one charge,” said Katherine Fernandez Rundle, the Miami-Dade state attorney.
Operation Spa LLC, a multi-agency, two-year law enforcement operation in Southwest Florida, convicted six operators for racketeering and/or money laundering, resulting in probable prison sentences of up to three years. Eight women pleaded guilty to prostitutionrelated crimes.
Florida law enforcement often falls back on charging women working in the massage parlors. Of the 57 arrested in the three recent raids, all but three were women, mostly immigrants from China. Forty-two faced prostitution charges.
In March, Martin County Sheriff Will Snyder told USA TODAY that the spas involved had “all the trappings of human trafficking.” Only one woman who ran a spa in Vero Beach faces charges even tangentially tied to trafficking.
Prosecutors charged Kraft with misdemeanor solicitation – a charge he is fighting. The two women accused of providing sexual services to him each face a felony related to prostitution.
Human trafficking experts compared authorities’ spa approach to arresting corner drug dealers instead of going after cartels. “You take the dealer off the street, and another dealer pops up,” said Carmen Pino, a retired federal agent with Homeland Security Investigations in Miami who participated in massage parlor investigations. “We can shut them down today, they’re just going to move somewhere else. Because you’re still not getting the big organizers.”
Victims supposed to be the focus
America’s understanding of human trafficking evolved as lawmakers began to view those caught up in forced sex work as victims, not criminals. Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000, citing growth of the sex trade and the criminal enterprises behind it. Victims, Congress said, were “repeatedly punished more harshly than the traffickers themselves.”
In 2004, Gov. Jeb Bush signed Florida’s first human trafficking law. As states passed get-tough laws to punish traffickers, law enforcement agencies stepped up their efforts to train officers how to respond when they encounter sex workers.
Many departments bring in experts to train patrol officers and detectives to recognize telltale signs of human trafficking. Women might be licensed for massage in more than one state, so they can be moved around with ease. Flushing, New York, is a common trafficking port of entry from overseas, so it might appear on their travel documents.
In Florida – which ranks third after California and Texas for human trafficking reports – stings have been carried out against dozens of parlors. Those raids almost never led to trafficking charges.
USA TODAY reviewed the cases of nearly 500 people charged with human trafficking from 2008 to 2017 in Florida. Just 15% were convicted; most saw their charges reduced, changed or dropped completely. Of the three people charged in spa cases, none ended up with a conviction for trafficking.
In Hollywood, police conducted undercover operations inside 24 spas during the summers of 2016 and 2017 in Operation Red Light. No one went to prison, not even two spa officials who acknowledged they tried to bribe police.
In Southwest Florida, the state Department of Law Enforcement led Operation Spa LLC, an investigation that culminated in raids of 13 spas in June 2017. Though the state’s investigative summary noted numerous signs of trafficking, no one faced that charge.
Miami Beach’s raid of four spas went further than most, leading to one of the three human trafficking charges. Police charged Mi Cha Jones with trafficking, saying women at the spa told them that Jones knew they were engaging in sex acts and that she withheld much of their earnings to pay for room and board.
As the case progressed, the state attorney offered Jones a deal: Plead guilty to profiting from prostitution. Her sentence? Probation and court costs.
The biggest hurdle in the case was the two victims, both of whom were picked up in the raid and refused to cooperate with prosecutors.
Without their testimony, Fernandez Rundle said, there was no way to prove they had been forced into prostitution.
After the raids, at least half of the 41 raided parlors were reviewed again on Rubmaps, suggesting sex acts continued to be sold. There is no way for USA TODAY to verify those reports, which are posted anonymously, and some spa managers and workers vehemently denied sex activity continues. A few of the spas were caught up in subsequent police efforts.
USA TODAY Network reporters visited all 41 spa locations this spring and found 13 that were still massage parlors. For some, documents indicate the same people are involved in managing the business. For others, it’s hard to tell.
Bonita Spa in Hollywood has been raided more than once, resulting in arrests that led to two charges and no contest pleas. Corporate records indicate ownership has stayed the same. According to Rubmaps reviews posted as recently as June, offerings may still extend beyond showers.
“I ask her to skip the massage and we got to business,” one reviewer said.
A worker there told USA TODAY that she would give the reporter’s business card to her manager. The manager did not reach out, and subsequent calls to the spa were not returned.
The Hollywood Police Department declined multiple interview requests. Citing the ongoing nature of the Operation Spa case, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Office of Statewide Prosecution also declined interview requests.
In April, a reporter stopped at the address on Pine Ridge Road where Asian Massage of Naples had been raided two summers ago by state special agents. The parlor has a new name, Naples Healthy Spa. A license posted on the wall listed the owner as Guohua Zhang.
Six days earlier, Zhang had been arrested by the Collier County sheriff after an undercover officer said Zhang accepted $200 to perform oral sex at the spa during a massage. Zhang signed a deferred prosecution agreement. If she satisfies the conditions, the state attorney will drop the prostitution charge.
Suspicions of a network
Most of the 41 spas raided were run through limited liability corporations, which provide a layer of anonymity to business owners. LLCs are easy to set up and Florida, like most states, allows them to include foreign nationals.
In documents, parlors may appear to be owned by someone working on site, sometimes listed as the LLC’s registered agent, officer or ambassador. The raided spas had revolving doors of registered agents, officers and ambassadors.
Angelina Li of Jal Accounting filed paperwork to remove a woman from her post as one company’s registered agent less than two weeks after the woman was arrested by Hollywood police at a Jade Spa. Li subbed in another woman who had been the registered agent for the company running a different Jade Spa in Miami Beach. A year later, police raided that second Jade Spa.
Li said she works with only a handful of spa clients and does not know of any illegal activity or efforts to hide owners.
On the night of the Miami Beach raid, police cordoned off Lulu Massage with yellow tape. Four days earlier, Olive Spa Inc. – a company registered to another spa in Miami – had changed its address to Lulu’s location. Two days after the raid, Lulu’s original LLC was dissolved.
The switch was suspicious, said Daniel Morgalo, a Miami Beach police captain. It prevented the city from keeping the spa closed because the business officially belonged to someone new, who was not in charge when undercover evidence was gathered. “It is frustrating for the investigators because sometimes it’s like sweeping water,” Morgalo said. “No matter how hard you sweep, it still comes back.”
Youngmei Cai & Associates handled the transfer of Olive Spa to the address of Lulu’s, a Jal client for years.
The names of the firms and their representatives – Li and Joseph Leung at Jal Accounting and Yongmei Cai – appear on records for nearly a dozen of the spas targeted in the three raids USA TODAY reviewed. Registered agents and officers who appeared alongside the CPAs indirectly connect a handful more.
In total, reporters found more than 60 spas in Florida related to 100 LLCs that used the same accounting firms or registered agents, according to corporate filings. At least three-quarters of those spas have been reviewed on Rubmaps since 2017.
USA TODAY found no mention of either CPA firm in public police and court documents related to the raids.
Contacted by phone, Cai, like Li, denied any knowledge of illegal activity – although she said she was aware of the police raids. Leung could not be reached for comment.
In its executive summary for Operation Spa, state law enforcement officials said using limited liability companies disguised the nature of the business and concealed its proceeds. It alone among the three raids mentioned the use of LLCs. The case listed four companies that officers said were run by Robert Jones; his wife, Xuan Lang; and her brother, Jun Lang. Jones and Jun Lang face prison time. Xuan Lang faces 21 months of community control.
One of Jones’ spas turned up in USA TODAY’s search with a connection to Youngmei Cai – she was the registered agent on an LLC registered to the spa’s address during the investigation.
The accounting firm connections unearthed by USA TODAY, Morgalo said, “would be something that I would want to look at as an investigator.”
Axon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Miami and Miami Beach. Braun reported from Naples, Sarasota, Bradenton and Cape Coral. Karl Etters reported from Tallahassee.
Contributing: Brooke Baitinger, John Kelly, Sara Marino and Brett Murphy
“It’s like sweeping water. No matter how hard you sweep, it still comes back.” Daniel Morgalo Miami Beach police captain