If there is a common thread linking the sex trafficking industry between Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, and the Florida panhandle, it is Flushing, New York. That includes the much-publicized Jupiter, Florida, massage parlor sting operation that brought sex crime charges against New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft in February. Lawyers for Kraft, 78, on Tuesday sued the Florida attorney general's office, claiming it violated an open records law by not turning over certain materials in the case.
Prosecutors claim video evidence shows Kraft paying for sex acts at Orchids of Asia Day Spa on consecutive days in January. He was one of hundreds of people charged in the investigation of four businesses. Many of the women working at the Orchids spa came from China via Flushing as part of a human trafficking network which allegedly forced them to perform sex acts with customers, investigators said. The same has been said for a number of Western Pennsylvania massage parlors.
Wymard, the Pennsylvania senior deputy attorney general who is leading the prosecution of four people arrested in March in the operation of five massage parlors in Monroeville and Murrysville. In August, federal prosecutors in Florida accused David C.
Williams, 41, of Pensacola of running a network of massage parlors from the Sunshine State to Pennsylvania β including ones in Bridgeville, Carnegie, Hempfield and Turtle Creek β that exploited undocumented women and underage girls to perform sex acts for money. Many of them flew from China to New York, where they made their way to Flushing before being sent to his various businesses, the FBI reported in court filings.
Two anonymous calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline prompted the investigation, agents said. Williams is charged with using interstate facilities for purposes of racketeering, conspiracy to commit money laundering and the harboring of illegal aliens for commercial advantage or private financial gain. Last month, U. Magistrate Judge Hope T. Cannon also mentioned in her September opinion Williams' many connections to Flushing, holding driver's licenses of several workers at his parlors that reported residences in Flushing.
