On Friday, Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, was charged with two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida. Kraft, who was not charged with human trafficking, was one of 25 people arrested as part of a months-long sex trafficking investigation, officials in Florida said. His spokesperson categorically denied that Kraft was "engaged in any illegal activity," adding that "Because it is a judicial matter, we will not be commenting further.” After the charges against the men were announced, police said their attention is focused on possible victims. "Obviously our concern in this investigation centers around our our possibility of victims of human trafficking," Jupiter Police Chief Daniel Kerr said during a press conference Friday. The women working at the massage parlor appeared to be living at the business, according to a Jupiter Police Department probable cause affidavit. One investigator noticed personal items, such as clothing and medicine, next to beds. Additionally, officials noted that the business' kitchen had a refrigerator with food and condiments that indicated the women were living on the premises. "We're working with advocacy groups and interpreters and getting as much support for them as we possibly can," Kerr said of the women. While it's unclear how the women in the Orchids of Asia Day Spa will be designated, officials have described the bust as possible human trafficking. In an email to NBC News on Saturday, Denise Brennan, a professor at and chairwoman of the anthropology department at Georgetown University, said there are several red flags that would help officials determine if the women were trafficked. "Restriction of movement is a classic page from traffickers' playbook. If the women working in the massage parlor were not allowed to leave the premises — and if when they left they were accompanied and/or monitored — then this might be a trafficking case," she said. "If we learn that their passports were taken, then we are looking at trafficking." Brennan also made clear that the sex work itself is not a calling card of human trafficking, but rather it's the lack of autonomy. "Trafficking — forced labor — can happen in any labor sector, and massage parlors are no exception," Brennan said. "It is not, however, a case of trafficking simply because it involves sex work." If the women, many of which are believed to have been brought to the United States from China, according to police, are charged as participating in criminal activity, they could be subjected to deportation or prosecution. But if they are designated as victims, they will be eligible for T visas, a visa solely designated for human trafficking victims. One of the most crucial first steps in victims getting help to stay in the United States is being designated by law enforcement as human trafficking survivors, according to experts. In 2017, Sarah Paoletti, director of the University of Pennsylvania Law School’s international human rights and immigration clinic, told NBC News the designation between victim and prostitute can be the determining factor in whether or not the women receive help and will be allowed to stay in the country. “If it’s a law enforcement bust, [police] can treat them as trafficking victims and connect them to the Department of Justice and services at the Department of Justice,” Paoletti said at the time. “Or they treat them as prostitutes, or people who were smuggled, and they can end up being treated as criminals rather than victims.” The T visas were created in October 2000 with the passing of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and 5,000 are available for applicants each year. In addition to proving they were trafficked, the victims would need to comply with law enforcement requests, and prove they would face danger if they were to return to their home country. They also have to prove they are admissible to the United States, meaning they have not been charged or convicted of a crime or illegally entered the county. However, because a trafficker may bring a victim into the country illegally, a wavier can be filed if a person is deemed inadmissible for the the T visa. If approved by USCIS, a T visa recipient can apply for permanent residence after three years, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website.<doc-sep>Yet making a trafficking case remains difficult, in part because the women who were victims may not want to cooperate with the police. Only one has been talking to deputies, Sheriff Snyder said. He had lined up about a dozen Mandarin interpreters, but many other women refused to speak and were let go with an offer of assistance. “I would never consider them prostitutes — it was really a rescue operation,” the sheriff said, training his anger at the men whose demand for sex kept the massage parlors in business. “The monsters are the men,” he added. In addition to arresting men ranging in age from their 30s to at least one in his 80s, the police charged several women who appeared to be overseeing the operation with racketeering, money laundering and prostitution. Sheriff Snyder said investigators, who worked with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, estimated the trafficking ring to be a $20 million international operation. Men paid between $100 and $200 for sex, the sheriff said; between $2 million and $3 million has been seized in Florida, he said, including a safe stuffed with Rolex watches. State Attorney Dave Aronberg of Palm Beach County, whose office leads a human trafficking task force with the F.B.I., said trafficking foreigners to work in places like massage parlors can be more difficult to root out than trafficking, for example, American girls who are recruited in person or online. “They come from countries where the police are part of the problem, and they’re smuggled into the country,” Mr. Aronberg said.<doc-sep>MARTIN COUNTY — Large parts of the investigation into what officials say are illicit spas and paid-sex operations represent new territory for law enforcement officials, who say lots of money is involved. “We are building the plane as we’re flying it, we’re learning, (Homeland Security Investigations) is learning, we’re uncovering a lot of the way that these organizations work,” Martin County Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Dougherty said Friday. “We’re seeing the way that the organizations are functioning as far as the money and the spas and the girls, the transactions.” Martin County Sheriff William Snyder and other officials this week disclosed five spas in Martin County and Jupiter were being investigated as part of a human trafficking probe involving sex for money. More: Patriots owner Robert Kraft charged with soliciting prostitution in Florida spa Arrests have been made of the those accused of running the spas and those accused of exchanging money for sexual favors. Dougherty said aspects of the case are eye-opening. “I never in a million years imagined it would be this much money involved,” he said. Opinion:Sex trafficking probe throws a hand grenade in local families' living rooms | Gil Smart He said between $180,000 and $200,000 in cash was seized through the search warrants at spas and homes. Dougherty said federal agencies are involved in “tracking money from China into the United States and laundering it here and sending it back other places to be laundered.” He said in general the massages are $75 to $100, but sex services are more. “We’ve seen up to $300, $400 changing hands,” he said. “It’s unreported money. That’s where it adds up quick. … You’re not getting sex for $50 or $75 or $100.” He noted about $3 million in asset forfeitures through bank accounts. “These people are reporting no income or very little income,” Dougherty said. More:Spa neighbor says case 'like a movie' A state report showed Ruimei Li, 48, of Jupiter, who was arrested on a host of charges, including racketeering and money laundering, was the only person earning income from Bridge Day Spa in 2017 and 2018, records state. Li reported she earned $4,500 per quarter from Bridge Day Spa. “The spas will make $20,000, $30,000 a year total, and yet they’re pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars that we know of,” he said. Dougherty said what they learned from federal investigators is that when one spa opens and is successful, another opens and then another. “Before you know it, your area is inundated,” he said. More: Human trafficking in Florida massage parlors: What happened in Vero Beach and Sebastian? Asked about possible links between the spas in Martin County and others in Indian River County that officials disclosed Thursday, Dougherty made an analogy to ownership of Toyota dealerships. “As it goes up the line, they’re all owned by Toyota,” he said. “They’re sort of like franchises.” More:Human trafficking on the Treasure Coast: Who was arrested? Federal agencies, he said, are working to “follow this pyramid, this organization to try and connect them and move to the top.” “We can show an organization here with definitely five spas in this area that’s run by one person with another assistant,” he said. He said federal officials are tracking the electronic trail of cash. “We’ve seen excessive amounts of money come into these bank accounts and move around, way, way, way, way more than you would ever imagine a spa of any sort,” he said. “We’re talking tens of millions of dollars.” He said women at the spas are taking tests and getting massage licenses, but don’t speak English. He said the tests are given just in English and Spanish. “So how are they taking these tests?” Dougherty said. “We can’t say that it’s fraud but we … can say that they can’t speak the language and take the test, so how are they doing it?” Dougherty said Attorney General Ashley Moody has said she is looking into that. Moody spoke with Snyder at a media briefing at the Martin County Sheriff’s Office this week. “We discovered this back when there was the previous administration of (Gov. Rick) Scott … and we brought it to their attention, but now they’re all gone so I think that the whole thing is gone with them,” Dougherty said. “We’re making sure they’re keeping up on that.” Snyder has said the women came from China, and Dougherty said he can’t say whether they are here illegally. “They have documents; now whether they’re legit or not, we don’t know,” he said. “What I can tell you is they come out of China and they … go through Flushing, New York.” He said they arrive by plane and all their documents come from Flushing. “That’s where the funnel comes to a tip,” Dougherty said. “When they come in this country and then they move out anywhere to LA to Miami, all over the place.” Dougherty said in terms of the local impact, shutting down the spas is considerable, but maybe not so much in the big picture. “It’s like the (drug) cartels: They get one load of dope caught out of 200, big deal, that’s the cost of doing business,” he said. “I think these spas they’re going to wipe away and say it’s the cost of doing business, and I think they will continue, just not here knowing that we are going to stay on them.” Want more Treasure Coast breaking news coverage? If you're already a subscriber to TCPalm, thank you! If not, please subscribe to keep coverage of Treasure Coast breaking news coming.<doc-sep>
Patriots owner Robert Kraft has been charged on two counts of soliciting prostitution in Florida, and his involvement in the scandal will be what carries the news. But it’s worth pointing out that the investigation that ensnared Kraft isn’t limited to only him, and the alleged crimes of those who owned the massage parlors extend beyond simple solicitation. The Jupiter Police Department first announced that Kraft had been charged, though several other law enforcement agencies in the area also held press conferences to discuss what has been a months-long investigation into sex trafficking rings across several counties in South Florida. News first broke Tuesday, when Jupiter PD released a 17-page arrest affidavit for Hua Zhang and Lei Wang, two women charged with four counts of prostitution-related offenses. Cops started looking into the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in October 2018, and they recorded video of 26 men paying for a variety of sex acts in January, when Kraft allegedly visited the spa. Jupiter police released a list of 25 people charged with solicitation today, including Kraft. Martin County Sheriff William Snyder announced the bust Tuesday, identifying five massage parlors that officials surveilled. He said it was a human trafficking case, and that the massage parlor workers were being treated as victims, not as paid sex workers. (Snyder starts at about the 13-minute mark in the video below.) Snyder outlined a transcontinental human trafficking operation: “The tentacles of this go from here to New York to China, in Florida from here to Orange County.” Officials seized between $2 and $3 million in assets, and traced the contours of an allegedly extensive money laundering operation. Women were allegedly moved from location to location within a network of spas, and were not given access to transportation. The women, all from China, were coerced into “graphic sexual activity, very risky behavior.” They were given no days off, forced to service an estimated 1,500 men a year without ever seeing much of the money they generated. From the Treasure Coast Palm: “It was clear that multiple women were working and living inside the spas. They were cooking on the back steps of the business,” Snyder said. “They were sleeping in the massage parlor on the massage tables.” While only 25 men have been served arrest warrants, Snyder said he expects that number to eventually quadruple. Meanwhile, the Indian River County sheriff announced the results of a similar but apparently unrelated bust on spas, with 173 men served with arrest warrants on similar charges. More are being arrested, and as was the case with the busts announced by Jupiter police and Martin County officials, law enforcement is still speaking to victims, with the help of translators, to investigate the trafficking angle. Both Indian River and Martin County officials outlined the same scheme: Poor women pay brokers to come over from China to work what they think will be legitimate jobs as maids or houseworkers, only to be coerced into sex work. Sheriff Snyder said that none of the victims were underage. It is worth mentioning that sex trafficking cases are often overblown by the authorities, and that the work of willing sex workers is often unfairly conflated with that of trafficking victims. “I think it’s very safe to say without any hyperbole that this is the tip of the tip of the iceberg,” Snyder said on Tuesday. Know more about the Florida massage parlor bust, or anything else? Drop a line at tips@deadspin.com. For added security, use our SecureDrop system.