60 agents search 8 ‘spas’
The massage parlors near Akron sell sex, authorities allege.
be working at these places,” the search warrants said.
One 25-year-old employee of Gemini Health Spa said she worked 12hour shifts three days a week, where her job was to bring men into the spa, give them showers, wash them, provide massages and then perform sex acts.
The warrants say many of the women are Korean and appear not to speak good English. The customers were mainly from outside the Warren area.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine says about 60 agents in his office’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation served search warrants Wednesday on eight spa businesses. DeWine launched the investigation at the request of Warren Police Chief Timothy Bowers. The businesses include Sun Spa, Tokyo Health Spa and Hong Kong Spa.
An attorney representing the businesses in a lawsuit said authorities did not observe any acts of prostitution when they searched the establishments.
The allegations are based on statements made by alleged clients without legal representation, attorney Gary Rich said Thursday.
A new city law shuts the businesses down between midnight and 6 a.m., more than doubles the cost of obtaining an operating permit to $1,800, and increases the cost to employees of renewing their license from $65 to $640. Rich also calls a new requirement that employees obtain 100 hours of training unreasonable, noting that a university bachelor’s degree can be earned with 120 credit hours. He is challenging the law in court.
“Our employment is a joke, our streets are crumbling,” said Rich, who also cited numerous problems in Warren with drug and property crime. “Where should we be focusing on?”
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine says about 60 agents in his office’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation served search warrants Wednesday on the businesses.
One 56-year-old female employee from Korea told investigators many of the women don’t have green cards allowing them to stay legally in the country.
Warren officials have struggled for years to address the spas, which have long been the source of prostitution allegations.
The city began licensing them in the 1990s in an effort to regulate them, said Warren Law Director Gregory Hicks.
He said that may have had the unintended consequence of legitimizing the establishments, which have been difficult to investigate given the city’s limited resources.
With the help of the Attorney General’s Office, authorities took a different approach over a yearlong investigation. Instead of targeting individual employees with prostitution charges, investigators used remote control cameras to record customers entering and leaving the businesses, then identified the customers and interviewed them about the activities inside, according to the search warrants.
“Our goal was to make them go away legally and the way to do that was to build a case to show they’re a nuisance,” Hicks said.
Over the years the number of spas has grown, thanks to the licensing and Warren’s proximity to several highways, Hicks said Thursday. He has ordered the Health Department to suspend the parlors’ licenses, and he plans by Monday to file nuisance lawsuits against each business.