sensational newscasts and lurid headlines. The U.K.'s Daily Mail summed the story up like this: "Police smash prostitution ring and rescue 12 South Korean women forced into $300-an-hour prostitution by ex marijuana grower who pimped them out across the U.S."

A Bellevue paper claimed the Korean women were "required to work off their family's debts through sexual service." The Seattle Times reported that police had thwarted "a widespread prostitution ring run by a group of men known as 'The League.'" Local news network KIRO 7 named photographer Michael Durnal and ex-marijuana entrepreneur Donald Mueller as the ringleaders, men who "sold women all over" America.

It was shocking, scandalous, horrifying. Yet almost none of it is true.

While most publications were careful to pepper "police said" into articles, their headlines and languageprecluded any sense of impartiality. "12 women forced into prostitution freed near Seattle," trumpeted The Oregonian, over an Associated Press article. That article, syndicated widely, said Korean women were "shipped from city to city about every month and typically not allowed to leave their apartments except to go to the airport." The New York Times reported that the women were being "brought to America and forced into prostitution to pay debts" by a "major human trafficking ring." Reuters reported that victims were "forced to work as much as 14 hours per day."

Police, meanwhile, continued to expand the reach of the case. In early May, five months after the first arrests, six more men were added to the complaint against alleged League members. These new defendants included archetypes of