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Law enforcement dismantled a sex trafficking network controlled by New York that for three years exploited Chinese women and committed “brutal assaults” against them in a dozen states in the country, as reported in a statement on Tuesday.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York revealed that it arrested and charged nine people who ran or managed this dangerous network with a series of crimes related to organized crime, sex trafficking, robbery, and violent assaults.
The defendants, who range in ages from 24 to 41 and are mostly of Asian origin, allegedly operated between April 2019 and September 2021 a “lucrative prostitution business throughout the United States” for which they recruited Chinese women in vulnerable situations and without legal immigration status.
The criminal network sent the women from Queens (New York) to other parts of the country and kept them sexually exploited for weeks in hotels or apartments under their control, to later collect the money they had received and reinvest it in their illegal activities, in addition to enriching their members.
Apart from that, the network brutally assaulted 15 Chinese women they suspected were prostituting themselves or for rival organizations, sending men to their rooms who tied them up, beat them with hammers, bats, or other weapons, and robbed them to impose discipline.
As part of the investigation, chilling phone messages were seized from arrested members of the network, instructing some of the men to beat to death or strangle the women.
The FBI’s division specializing in Asian criminal enterprises, a collaborator in the case, indicated that there may be more victims of the network throughout the country and called on victims or those with information to contact the authorities, assuring that language or immigration status is not a problem.
