Former councilman had his suspicions about massage parlor

When federal and state authorities searched Thai Massage in Carnegie on Thursday, Allegheny County Councilman Pat Catena was not surprised.

Five years ago, the business sought Carnegie Borough Council’s permission for a conditional use in a commercially zoned district so it could open at 39 W. Main St.

“I was the lone vote against it,” Mr. Catena recalled in a telephone interview Saturday.

In 2014, Mr. Catena was president of the six-member Carnegie Borough Council.

“It didn’t seem to me like a business that we wanted in Carnegie,” Mr. Catena said.

“If I remember correctly, there was a similar place in Turtle Creek when I started searching the people’s names. There was an individual out there who had had prior run-ins with the law for prostitution,” Mr. Catena added.

OnThursday, agents from the Pittsburgh FBI, state police and state attorney general’s office searched Thai Massage in Carnegie, Ci Ci Wellness in Turtle Creek, Massage 10 in Jeannette and Thai Massage in Bridgeville. Agents also searched 1407 Peninsula Massage in Erie. The searches were part of an investigation into human trafficking in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida.

David Williams, 41, of Pensacola, Fla., was charged in federal court on Aug. 9, but the case remains under seal. He is accused of exploiting undocumented women and offering sex acts for money at his massage parlors. He faces criminal charges of using interstate facilities for racketeering, conspiracy to launder money and harboring illegal aliens for profit. He has a detention hearing on Aug. 20 in Pensacola.

Thai Massage, Mr. Catena said, “didn’t seem that it had the up-and-up reputation that they were portraying, not only at the hearing but in public.”

Carnegie Solicitor Nathaniel Boring could not be reached for comment, and council President Sue Demko did not respond to requests for comment.

To open the massage parlor, Excel USA Trading & Services Co. sought a conditional use in a commercially zoned area in Carnegie. The business owner, Qun Shen, sought permission; her 16year-old son, Max Shen, spoke for her because, he told council, his mother did not speak fluent English.

At a hearing on June 9, 2014, Joseph G. Lucas, then Carnegie’s solicitor, asked if customers would be clothed. Max Shen said massage therapists would be clothed, doors to rooms would be unlocked and his mother could walk in at any time. He also said customers would wear underwear.

Mr. Lucas sought assurance that the massage parlor would not be a front for prostitution.

“People are familiar with clinical and medical massages, but then there are fronts for prostitution,” Mr. Lucas said. “There’s no way to really tell except to ask you.”

Rick D’Loss, who served on Carnegie Borough Council for eight years, said zoning regulations would not stop a massage business from opening.

“We have physical therapists on Main Street. There is not a distinction between physical therapy and massage therapy. It’s lumped together under personal services along with hairdressers and nail salons and tattoo shops, “Mr. D’Loss said in a telephone interview.

“There were people who were opposed” to the business, Mr. D’Loss added, because they suspected “it was not on the up and up.”

Hurricane Ivan put Carnegie’s Main Street completely underwater in 2004. Back then, as he walked the business district, Mr. Catena wondered to himself, “My God, are we going to rebuild?” The vacancy rate was 90%, he said.

“We worked hard with the Carnegie Community Development Corporation getting businesses in there over the years,” he added.

Now, Mr. Catena said, “it’s a bustling Main Street we’re very proud of.” Carnegie is home to a wide variety of restaurants, small boutiques, a stationery store, a popular coffee shop housed in a former Carnegie Library, the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall and a former church that became a banquetspace called Cefalo’s.