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Raids aim to put sex-slave ring out of business
31 arrests include some in Charlotte

Larry Neumeister, The Associated Press

NEW YORK - Twenty brothels posing as legitimate businesses from Rhode Island to North Carolina were shut down, 31 people were arrested, and more than 70 suspected Korean sex slaves were freed from a large human-trafficking organization, 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 City Police Department detective, said Julie L. Myers, assistant secretary for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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 people who handled the money.

Myers said the victims, who were working in brothels throughout the Northeast, were being interviewed by ICE agents at secret nondetention 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.

Yet, she said, she was encouraged to know that "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, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maryland, California and Rhode Island.

The North Carolina arrests occurred in Charlotte, ICE said.

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 the United States was seeking to break the backs of the human-trafficking rings by increasing the number of investigations of smugglers and traffickers and targeting the financial proceeds.

"Some of these criminals look upon people as cargo, just something that must be moved," she said. "But we know that the victims of trafficking and smuggling are not cargo. They are human beings who often have been mentally and physically broken down in every way possible to achieve a mental state in which they can no longer fight against their captors and try to escape."

She 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, and 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.

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