Baltimore Co.
Home Up 'Ordering' Women

 

The Moon Light Tanning and Spa in Randallstown, MD

Federal agents raided the Moon Light Tanning and Spa this week on charges of prostitution.

the baltimore examiner

 

“Young, old, black, white,” said a hairdresser at Blessed Hands Unisex Salon and Apparel who declined to give her name, describing the men

she watched walk into the shop next door. “I used to stand out there and laugh.”

The Baltimore Examiner

8/18/06

 

"Twenty brothels posing as legitimate businesses from Rhode Island to North Carolina were shut down and 31 people were arrested,

freeing more than 70 sex workers enslaved by a large human trafficking ring, officials said Wednesday."

Associated Press

8/16/06

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feds: Tanning Salon actually a brothel


Kathleen Cullinan,

The Baltimore Examiner

 Aug 18, 2006

 

BALTIMORE - A detailed log was kept of customers who frequented an alleged brothel in Woodlawn and $21,000 in cash was found in a raid this week on the parlor, which presented itself as a tanning salon, federal officials said.

Customers would “pretty much know” what was really for sale beyond the waiting room at Moon Light Tanning and Spa when they went inside, said Mark Bastan, an official at the Baltimore office of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Woodlawn storefront was part of a network of similar establishments as far north as Rhode Island and south to Washington, D.C., officials said, that employed Korean women smuggled into the United States and prostituting themselves to repay their transportation debts.

“These are not uncommon. We’ve had a number of investigations with Hispanic organizations and Vietnamese organizations,” said Bastan, whose office launched its own investigation into Moon Light more than six months ago. New York authorities took it over this spring, discovering the enterprise ran up the East Coast, Bastan said.

Three women — Sun Im An, 44, Kum Ok Lowery, 53, and Mi Ja Park, 41 — were arrested and five more were found hiding in secret compartments inside the salon when officials broke down the door Tuesday in the raid, Bastan said. A fourth woman is still wanted, he said.

Local authorities stopped men coming to patronize Moon Light after the raid, checking them for outstanding warrants and sending them on their way, said Baltimore County police spokesman Bill Toohey. Two of the women found hiding in the salon were arrested on state prostitution charges, he said: Nan Taylor, 48, of Colorado Springs, Colo., and Soo Mi Lee, 28, of McLean, Va. Toohey said the state doesn’t generally pursue charges against men for soliciting prostitution.

Two more of the five found hiding in the salon were taken to a facility in Virginia and a third, a naturalized citizen, was released, Bastan said.

Sitting in the middle of a strip mall opposite Woodlawn High School, the salon operated alongside international food markets, a mosque, a small church and a world travel agency. The neon “Open” sign in the window was dark Thursday, but stickers on the glass door advertised three separate security systems in place at the store. Shopkeepers and customers said they were surprised at the news about the salon.

“Young, old, black, white,” said a hairdresser at Blessed Hands Unisex Salon and Apparel who declined to give her name, describing the men she watched walk into the shop next door. “I used to stand out there and laugh.”

kcullinan@baltimoreexaminer.com

 

 

 

 

 

Feds raid 20 brothels in breakup of Korean sex slave ring


By LARRY NEUMEISTER,

The Associated Press
Aug 16, 2006
 

NEW YORK - Twenty brothels posing as legitimate businesses from Rhode Island to North Carolina were shut down and 31 people were arrested, freeing more than 70 sex workers enslaved by a large human trafficking ring, officials said Wednesday.

 

The arrests Tuesday capped a 15-month probe that began when a Korean couple who owned and operated a chain of brothels in Queens tried to bribe an undercover New York Police Department detective, said Julie L. Myers, assistant secretary for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

 

Those arrested on federal charges including conspiracy to engage in human trafficking, prostitution and conspiracy to transport illegal aliens included brothel owners and managers, middlemen who worked as transporters and individuals who handled the money.

 

Myers said the victims who were working in brothels throughout the Northeast were being interviewed by ICE agents at secret non-detention locations, where they were receiving health care, clothing, food and other services as they were being questioned.

 

She said it was disheartening to hear agents describe stories "of women who were promised a better life and instead held as sex slaves" at brothels posing as massage parlors, health spas and acupuncture clinics in New York, Washington D.C., Connecticut, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maryland and Rhode Island.

 

Yet, she said, she was encouraged to know "these same women had been rescued and freed from their shadowy existence and that we could help bring to justice those criminals who enslaved them."

 

The arrests occurred in Washington, D.C., New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maryland, California and Rhode Island. If convicted, those charged faced maximum sentences of five to 10 years.

 

Myers said the Flushing, Queens, couple who touched off the probe paid at least $125,000 to the undercover detective as investigators tapped telephones and exposed an international scheme to smuggle women from Korea to the United States to work in brothels.

 

The couple was arrested in March along with two police officers who were discovered during the investigation to be accepting bribes, authorities said.

Myers said it might take weeks to build enough trust with wary victims to get them to speak to investigators, and she acknowledged that some of the 70 suspected victims might turn out to have known the risks of the brothel trade and chose to work in it anyway.

 

U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said the smuggling organization relied on recruiters who went to Korea and found young women eager to live in the United States.

 

The recruiters then charged the women tens of thousands of dollars to provide false documentation to enter the country or to smuggle them in, he said.

Once in the United States, the women were placed in brothels along the eastern seaboard, unable to leave the business until their debt was paid, he said.

Identity and travel documents were seized from the women, threats were made that they would be turned over to authorities or that family members would be harmed in Korea if they tried to leave, Garcia said.

 

 

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.

 

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