BOSTON — A Massachusetts girl accused of working a high-end brothel community with rich and outstanding purchasers in that state and the Washington, D.C., suburbs is ready to be sentenced Wednesday.
Han Lee and two others have been indicted remaining 12 months on one rely of conspiracy to steer, lure, and coerce a number of people to go back and forth in interstate or international trade to interact in prostitution and one rely of cash laundering, consistent with prosecutors. The operation, consistent with courtroom paperwork, generated thousands and thousands of greenbacks a 12 months, and consumers paid loads of greenbacks an hour for services and products.
Junmyung Lee of Dedham, Massachusetts, pleaded accountable in October and is ready to be sentenced subsequent month. James Lee of Torrance, California, accused of renting the residences within the operation, pleaded accountable remaining month to his involvement within the scheme in addition to fraudulently acquiring just about $600,000 in pandemic reduction budget. He’s set to be sentenced subsequent month.
Prosecutors are difficult that Han Lee, who pleaded accountable in September, be sentenced to 6 years imprisonment and 3 years of supervised launched for operating “one of the vital a hit prostitution networks” at the East Coast. They estimate that just about 10,000 business intercourse dates passed off in her brothels, consistent with courtroom information, and that she “managed the daily operations.”
“Han profited immensely off ladies promoting their our bodies for intercourse and she or he hid multimillions of greenbacks of illicit proceeds earned from her industry,” Assistant United States Legal professional Lindsey Weinstein wrote. “Han enticed and recruited ladies to go back and forth to Massachusetts or Virginia from different states, and on hundreds of events, directed ladies to have intercourse with strangers for cash. She made a staggering general sum of money – a minimum of $5.46 million bucks over greater than 4 years – and used refined way to cover that cash from regulation enforcement.”
However Lee’s federal public defender, Scott Lauer, plead for leniency, announcing in courtroom paperwork that Lee grew up deficient in South Korea and had a father who drank closely and used to be abusive. After arriving in the USA, she turned into a intercourse employee in California, Las Vegas and New York ahead of settling in Massachusetts and proceeding to paintings within the industry.
After a brothel used to be raided, Han Lee noticed the chance to arrange the community. The protection contends not one of the intercourse employees on this operation have been pressured to do the process and that they saved a majority of the revenues.
“Whilst instances involving prostitution continuously contain a point of drive or coercion exerted towards the ladies concerned, this example does now not,” Lauer wrote. “There’s a international of distinction between Ms. Lee — a intercourse employee herself — and a pimp (or madam) who enriches themselves on the expense of the ones acting the paintings. The economic intercourse employees on this case have been effectively handled and effectively compensated.”
Government stated the industrial intercourse ring in Massachusetts and northerly Virginia catered to politicians, corporate executives, army officials, attorneys, professors and different well-connected purchasers.
Just about 30 of the patrons are showing courtroom this month in Cambridge, after the state’s easiest courtroom dominated remaining 12 months that the hearings must be public. The primary staff of patrons seemed in courtroom remaining week, and a 2d staff is ready to seem Friday.
The ladies who labored within the brothels weren’t recognized or criminally charged and have been regarded as sufferers, prosecutors stated.
Prosecutors stated their proof integrated witness testimony from ladies who labored on the brothels, intercourse patrons who made appointments or gained services and products, bodily surveillance and digital proof.
Han Lee maintained the operation from 2020 to November 2023. The cash made on the brothels used to be from time to time saved within the freezer to be picked up, prosecutors stated. They stated she additionally helped educate Junmyung Lee to lend a hand vet intercourse patrons.
The brothel operation used web sites that falsely claimed to market it nude fashions for pro images, prosecutors allege. The operators rented high-end residences to make use of as brothels in Watertown and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Tysons and Fairfax, Virginia, prosecutors stated. Brothels have been maintained at 4 places in Massachusetts and two in Virginia.
In step with courtroom paperwork, the defendants established area regulations for the ladies all over their remains in a given town to offer protection to and deal with the secrecy of the industry and make sure the ladies didn’t draw consideration to the prostitution paintings inside of condo structures.
Every web page described a verification procedure that intercourse patrons undertook to be eligible for appointment bookings, together with requiring purchasers to finish a sort offering their complete names, e mail addresses, telephone numbers, employers and references if they’d one, government stated.
