Apple Spa, Bellevue, WA, United States
The 21-month investigation used confidential informants, court approved wiretaps, and GPS tracking to identify those involved with the sex trafficking ring. Information about the criminal activity first surfaced in April 2004 when the Eastside Narcotics Task Force raided the Apple Spa in Bellevue after determining it was a front for prostitution. Both KANG, JIANG, and ZHU had been involved in the operation of the Apple Spa. ZHU was deported to China as an illegal alien, but quickly returned illegally to the United States. KANG and JIANG failed to show up for deportation hearings. In December 2004, FBI agents in Portland learned KANG had resurfaced there and was operating a brothel. In the midst of the investigation in May 2005, KANG returned to Seattle and opened a brothel. In various conversations with confidential sources or on wiretapped telephone calls, conspirators discussed how the Asian women had been smuggled into the United States. KANG told one confidential informant that women were being smuggled into the U.S. in shipping containers, paying fees to smugglers of as much as $50,000. The investigation determined that some of the women were smuggled into the U.S. by illegally crossing the border from Canada. The women had to pay off their debts to the smugglers by working in brothels in cities across the country. One of the conspirators was recorded in a phone conversation saying she had lost a lot of money when smuggled women fled without working off their debt. Law enforcement was able to track tens of thousands of dollars going from the U.S. to possible smuggling “agents” in China who arrange for the women to be smuggled into the country. The investigation determined women working in the brothels were citizens of China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and Laos. The investigation is continuing into the brothel network in other U.S. cities.