Officials Shut Down Two Manhattan Brothels

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Federal law enforcement officials announced yesterday that they have closed 19 brothels across the Northeast, including two in Manhattan.

The women working in the brothels had been smuggled in from Korea, and federal agents yesterday were investigating whether the women were held at the brothels against their will. More than 30 people have been arrested and nearly 70 women are being held as authorities conduct interviews.

The loose network of brothels extended to Georgia from Massachusetts, according to an indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Tuesday.In Manhattan, brothels were located at 221 E. 59th St. and West 26th Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway, according to a law enforcement source and the criminal complaint.

Federal authorities learned of the network of brothels while investigating possible police corruption last year in Flushing, Queens, an FBI agent, Andrew Arena, said at a news conference yesterday.

That probe, which resulted in the arrests of two Police Department officers in March, investigated whether police officers were accepting bribes in return for allowing a brothel to operate. Based on a wiretap of one of the brothel operators, federal law enforcement officials learned that the brothel they were investigating was exchanging women with other brothels located across the Eastern seaboard, prosecutors said.

Each brothel had between two and eight Korean women, according to court papers. The women entered America with false immigration papers prepared by middlemen or were smuggled across the Canadian or Mexican border, the complaint said.

Yesterday, law enforcement officials were trying to determine whether the prostitutes were sex slaves held against their will or willing participants in an illegal enterprise. An assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Julie Myers, said the 67 “possible victims” had been “freed from their shadow existence.”

It was unknown whether the women would receive visas to remain in America, Ms. Myers said.

In some instances, brothel managers held onto the women’s immigration papers. Many of the women also owed the middlemen tens of thousands of dollars for smuggling them into America, and worked at the brothels to repay their debts, prosecutors said.

It was “an international scheme,” Ms. Myers said. “It was not just a couple of brothels.”

In all, 41 defendants, mainly Korean nationals, have been charged, and all but 10 have been arrested. The alleged crimes range from interstate transportation of women for the purpose of prostitution to conspiring to engage in human trafficking. Four defendants also have been charged with operating an unlicensed money transmitting business for sending prostitution proceeds back to Korea.

Prosecutors said some of the brothels posed as massage parlors or acupuncture clinics. Six of the brothels operated in Washington, D.C., and six were in Connecticut, among other places, the complaint said. The U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Michael Garcia, said 19 brothels have been raided as part of the investigation.


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