As many as 9,000 illegal massage parlors currently operate in more than 1,000 cities nationwide, fueling a more than $3,000,000,000 industry, according to the Polaris Project, a nonprofit that runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
Tucked into a pedestrian strip mall in an affluent oceanside community, the Orchids of Asia Day Spa employed mostly immigrant workers and was linked allegedly similar operations in other Florida counties, authorities said.
"We need to get beyond the whack-a-mole strategy of taking out one retail location at a time," said Bradley Myles, Polaris' CEO."We need to see multi-state investigations that take a longer look, follow the money and build these organized crime cases." In one recent case, a 38-year-old woman was charged with running a human trafficking and money laundering operation across six Asian massage parlors in the suburbs north of Boston.
That comes despite police rolling out a new human trafficking strategy in 2017, promising to crack down on customers, pimps and brothel operators rather than arresting prostitutes. New York police emailed statements about their new approach, but they did not provide arrest data or comment on why they did not appear to have made major arrests of traffickers.
Lawmakers in Illinois, New Jersey, Texas and a dozen other states are also weighing stricter regulations on the massage industry this year. Federal and state prosecutors, meanwhile, have gone after the johns who post detailed, Yelp-style reviews about their massage parlor experiences on online message boards.
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Perspective | In Robert Kraft case, Roger Goodell can’t winPerspective: At the end of the Robert Kraft scandal, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will stand as his greatest judge. It is the strangest, truest and perhaps the saddest thought of this disturbing situation.
Read more »
New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft charged with soliciting prostitutionNew England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has been charged with allegedly soliciting prostitution as part of a larger probe into human trafficking. Florida police claim to have video of Kraft from two separate incidents that show the two acts that he is facing charges for.
Read more »