for drinks at local bars. Part two of this series will explore The League in more depth.

PART TWO: How Washington Police Turned Talking About Prostitution into a Felony Offense

Detectives called it "Operation No Impunity." For years, investigators from the King County Sheriff's Office (KCSO) had been monitoring The Review Board (TRB), a website where Seattle-area sex workers advertised and prostitution clients—or "hobbyists," as they preferred to be called—reviewed their services. The most active reviewers were invited to become part of "The League," a group of men who communicated on a members-only website and held monthly meetups at local bars.

Beginning in June 2015, these meetups were monitored by KCSO, including one undercover detective who had been invited into the group after years of posing as a TRB user. Memberswould soon find their "hobby" at the center of a national story in which they were cast as human traffickers by law enforcement and media.

"'The League,' the sex trafficking site they frequented and a half dozen brothels in Bellevue were raided and shut down," announced the Bellevue Reporter in January 2016. "Police in the Seattle area…freed a dozen women who were forced into prostitution, arrested 14 people and shut down two websites this week as part of a sex-trafficking investigation," the Associated Press reported in an article syndicated around the U.S.

"King County Sheriff John Urquhart said most or all of the exploited women had been brought to the U.S. from South Korea, where some had been forced into bondage to pay off debts their families owed to criminal