HIDDEN CAMERAS, SEX-FOR-CASH AND TRASH FORAGES
Tireless work behind the sting could be a national blueprint
STUART, Fla. – As families shopped around them, a steady stream of men wandered in and out of the Bridge Day Spa, a massage parlor in a strip mall anchored by a Publix supermarket and a Sherwin-Williams paint store. Police say the men engaged in illicit sexual activity with Chinese masseuses in private massage rooms inside the spa, with two or three women reportedly exchanging sexual acts with up to 10 men a day.
Eleven miles away at the Martin County Sheriff ’s Office, detectives huddled inside a conference room turned high-tech surveillance hub and followed the activity on color flatscreen monitors. Often, they radioed a team perched outside the spa, who would follow the unsuspecting johns and try to identify them, gathering IDs that would number in the hundreds.
That complex and painstaking –
and, to some, controversial – teamwork was at the center of a four-county, seven-month sex trafficking investigation of massage parlors that included hidden cameras, billionaire johns, semen-stained napkins and a $20 million suspected network that stretched from China to New York to Florida.
The investigation, which ensnared nearly 300 suspected johns, including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, has sparked a national conversation about human trafficking and renewed calls to strengthen anti-trafficking laws. Police say some of the spa employees were locked inside the parlors for weeks at a time and made to engage in sexual acts with clients as many as 16 times a day.
Overall, hundreds of work hours and more than $400,000 worth of detective work went into the effort police hope will bring down the network – and could be replicated in counties across the USA.
“This was a lot more widespread than any of us thought,” Martin County Sheriff William Snyder said.
More than 10 people connected to the spas have been charged with offenses ranging from racketeering and money laundering to profiting from prostitution. Only one woman, Lanyun Ma, 49, of Orlando, who ran the East Spa in downtown Vero Beach, has been accused by police of human trafficking, but prosecutors have not formally filed that charge.
Through a spokesman, Kraft, 77, who police say visited an illicit massage parlor in Jupiter in January, has denied engaging in any illegal activity. His attorney said Thursday that Kraft will not attend a court arraignment set for March 28, despite a court notice requiring him to appear in person.
Interviews and court documents show the investigation stretched across four Florida counties – Orange, Indian River, Martin and Palm Beach – and netted more than $2 million in seized assets. They also reveal the complexities and challenges of investigating sex trafficking rings, where victims and suspects are often one and the same.
Paul Petruzzi, a Miamibased attorney representing one of the arrested spa managers, said some of the police tactics – such as secretly installing surveillance cameras in private massage rooms – could face legal scrutiny later.
“It’s a very rare and unusual
“We found a way to do this. If I had my way, we’d bring this methodology to a massage parlor near you.” William Snyder
Sheriff, Martin County, Fla.
law enforcement tactic to be used,” he said, “and very rare for courts to authorize such a tactic.”
The investigation began on July 6 with a phone call to the Martin County Sheriff ’s Office from Karen Herzog, a Florida Department of Health inspector. On a routine inspection of the Bridge Day Spa in Stuart, she noticed suitcases, slept-in massage tables and provocatively dressed masseuses in the strip mall parlor, according to court documents.
Working on Herzog’s tip, Snyder deployed lead detective Michael Felton to look into the spa. For more than two weeks, Felton observed a steady stream of customers, most of them male, coming in and out of the parlor, questioned some johns leaving the spa and recovered physical evidence, such as semen-stained napkins from outside trash bins, according to Snyder and court documents.
Felton reported his findings to Snyder and top commanders in the department’s Criminal Investigations Division: There was prostitution and likely human trafficking occurring at the spa, he told them. Snyder said he then made a decision: Instead of raiding and shutting down the spa, he would launch a protracted investigation.
“We would actually see how far we could go in making a case for human trafficking or racketeering,” said Snyder, a former Republican state lawmaker who co-wrote one of the state’s human trafficking laws. “My sense was: These women don’t do this on their own.”
The department assigned up to 10 detectives to the case. They soon noticed that the women, who were all Asian, were often shuttled in expensive cars to other spas: the Cove Day and Florida Therapy spas in Stuart and the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, 17 miles south. Some would enter the spas and not emerge for weeks, he said.
Snyder called the Jupiter Police Department. “I told them, ‘You got a racketeering case going on in your massage parlor,” he said. Police there jumped on the case. Their focus: the Orchids of Asia Day Spa, a storefront spa in a strip mall in northeast Jupiter featuring a Publix supermarket and several pizzerias.
Snyder also sought help from Homeland Security Investigations, which provided Mandarin interpreters, money and other resources, he said.
In September, Martin County Sheriff detectives obtained court approval – known as a “break-order warrant” – to install surveillance cameras inside area spas, Snyder said. Officials converted a conference in the department’s headquarters into a high-tech surveillance hub. Four flat-screen monitors showed the inner workings of the spas, in color.
Three detectives – one of which was always a female officer – constantly monitored the screens during the spas’ business hours, from 9 a.m. to about 11 p.m., he said.
Meanwhile, investigators pored over bank and property records of the spa owners, untangling a web of ownership and money that stretched to China. More than $20 million was flowing between China and the Florida spas, Snyder said. The case was growing.
As police in Martin and Palm Beach counties gathered evidence in their case, Vero Beach Police were sending undercover agents into the East Spa in downtown Vero Beach in a separate – and coincidentally concurrent – investigation.
As women were tracked to other nearby spas, detectives from neighboring Sebastian Police Department and the Indian County Sheriff ’s Office opened their own investigations, Currey said.
Vero Beach Police Detective Sgt. Phil Huddy would later enter one of the Vero Beach parlors. There were beds constructed from 2-by-4 planks and mattresses thrown atop, a refrigerator stuffed with food, a break room with a microwave where meals were prepared, and a makeshift shower or spigot coming out of a wall. “That’s the conditions these ladies were living in,” Huddy said.
By February, investigators were ready to move in. On Feb.19, they launched coordinated raids on the spas.
A major challenge remains getting some of the arrested women to cooperate with investigators. Snyder watched as one of the women, Lixia Zhu, 48, dissolved into sobs as she told detectives how she came from China to work at a nail salon in Chicago, then was forced into sex trafficking. Her passports were locked up and her relatives in China were threatened, Snyder said.
Then, midway through the interview, a Mandarin-speaking attorney from New York showed up. He spoke to Zhu, who immediately stopped cooperating. “It threw a chill over the entire investigative division,” Snyder said.
About a week after the arrests, Martin County Sheriff deputies also received some encouraging intel from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office: U-Haul trucks had been backed up to two massage parlors in their jurisdiction. They were packing up and leaving town.
“We found a way to do this,” Snyder said. “If I had my way, we’d bring this methodology to a massage parlor near you.”