economy actually operated, the motivations of its main actors, and how police came to "infiltrate" the scene. Part two explores how the government's war on prostitution—rebranded as a war on sex trafficking—brands innocent men as sexual predators and sets dangerous new standards of disrespect for free speech and free association rights. And part three looks at how policies designed to get tough on pimps and traffickers wind up threatening the very women they're supposed to save.

'Shipped From City to City'

The first wave of arrests came just after New Year's. On January 6, working with the FBI and the Bellevue Police Department (BPD), officers from the King County Sheriff's Office (KCSO) raided 12 upscale apartments in Bellevue, a large and affluent suburb of Seattle that's become a hub oftech industry. At a press conference the next day, they announced that 12 female victims from South Korea had been rescued, 12 "brothels" closed, and a major human-trafficking ring shut down.

The team also seized three websites: The Review Board (TRB), a web forum where Seattle sex workers and clients communicated; KGirlsDelights.com, a directory of Korean sex-workers and escort-agencies in America; and TheLoeg.com, a private site for local prostitution story-swapping. TRB was run by "Tahoe Ted"—otherwise known as Sigurds Zitars—arrested the day prior along with nine suspected members of the LOEG (or "League," as police spelled it).

Prosecutor Dan Satterberg described the situation as one of extreme coercion and criminality, calling the 12 Asian women recovered in the operation "true victims of human trafficking."

News of the bust soon spread in