Lee Rood Des Moines Register
Published 3:00 PM EDT Mar 20, 2019
This story is the first of three parts.
The men who frequented the two Dubuque massage parlors told stories almost identical to those of other johns across the country.
Flower Garden Massage and 485 TuiNa Studio advertised, like others, on sites like Craigslist, Backpage and Rubmaps. For $60 and a tip that often ranged from $20 to $40, those who frequented the parlors got a massage that finished with a “happy ending.” No questions asked.
What happened inside the parlors is now commonplace across Iowa, according to multiple city and law enforcement officials.
What happened to their owner, John R. Hart, and his wife, Meirong Li, after they were arrested was not.
Hart, 67, and Li, 55, face a trial May 7 in district court in what is believed to be the only felony human trafficking and pimping case prosecuted in Iowa related to the illicit massage industry.
Though cities across the state have taken steps to pass ordinances and legislators have moved to enhance penalties to curtail the spread of illicit massage, the businesses are flourishing, undeterred by law enforcement, a Watchdog investigation found.
Low-level arrests thus far across the state typically have targeted the women forced or manipulated into the trade, most often Chinese foreign nationals with few, if any language skills, police reports show.
In Iowa, at least 172 businesses were listed in mid-March on Rubmaps.com, a site that allows paid subscribers to review workers in the sex trade and share tips for not getting arrested. That's far more than when Watchdog first examined the growing industry in November 2016.
Federal investigators used the "where fantasy meets reality" website to help track and nab hundreds of men who paid for sex in the massive eight-month sting that ensnared New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft in Florida.
Kraft, a billionaire friend of President Donald Trump, is accused of soliciting prostitution at Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida. A spokesperson for Kraft has said he did not engage "in any illegal activity," but police have said there is video evidence.
Trafficking experts say similar stings are beginning to happen more often across the country, including busts in the past two months related to trafficking and money laundering in Seattle and Dallas.
But not anywhere in Iowa, Watchdog found.
In Iowa, authorities have hit dead ends when the women involved in stings and routine checks don't cooperate.
"They don't talk," said Tim Duax, an assistant U.S. attorney out of Sioux City. "That doesn't mean that we don't look at these cases. But the victims don't cooperate in the same way that other victims do."
Des Moines rated top 100 site for trafficking
In 2016, the Polaris Network, a nonprofit that runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline, named Des Moines one of the top 100 human trafficking sites in the U.S. based in part on the activity they were tracking on sites like Rubmaps.com. Scraping data, they found eight suspected illicit massage parlors in Des Moines and 45 across Iowa at the time.
Even after numerous businesses have been closed, 13 Asian massage or reflexology businesses remained open this month in Des Moines,13 in Cedar Rapids and 13 in Davenport. Dozens of others are scattered around state, including six each in Waterloo and Sioux City, five in West Des Moines, three in Clive and one in Waukee. (All told, 173 Asian massage parlors have been listed on the site since 2014, but not all of them are still open.)
"We believe cities and states across the country need to do more about this," said Bradley Myles, Polaris' executive director. "There's a pretty significant difference between the volume and size of how big the problem is and the resources being deployed to tackle it."
Iowa is supposed to have some of the best laws in the country to combat sex trafficking. Those convicted of buying or selling another person, including johns who patronize massage parlors for sex, are supposed to do mandatory jail time.
But no one has been prosecuted for human trafficking under Iowa's state statute, 710A.2, since 2015, according to Steve Michael, administrator for Iowa’s Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning.
Hart and Li, who have pleaded not guilty, would be the first. Their attorneys did not return phone calls seeking comment.
No federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorneys' offices in the northern and southern districts of Iowa have convicted any traffickers in the illicit massage industry, spokespeople for both offices confirmed.
In a statement, Marc Krickbaum, U.S. Attorney for the southern district, said prosecuting sex trafficking is a high priority for his office. He pointed to 10 trafficking cases since 2017.
But none of those cases were related to the illicit massage industry, the leading reason for sex trafficking in the state, according to the calls to Polaris' national trafficking hotline.
“I encourage all victims of sex trafficking to report these abuses to law enforcement," Krickbaum said. "Your report will be taken seriously, and we will fight for justice on your behalf.”
Women more often arrested than customers
Massage-related calls from Iowa to the National Human Trafficking Hotline have outnumbered those from other surrounding Midwestern states — except Illinois — in a two-year span from June 2016 to June 2018, according to Polaris.
But when massage parlors are busted, the men who frequent them are less likely to be charged than the women working there, state data show.
And the number of people arrested for purchasing sex in Iowa actually dropped by more than half from 2016, the year when Watchdog readers first raised concerns, to 2018.
In 2016, 34 people were arrested for purchasing sex. Last year, the number was 12, according to the Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning.
In 2016, 86 arrests were made for prostitution. In 2018, there were just 24, state data show.
Myles, of the Polaris Network, said his organization is very concerned that investigations continue to target women working in the massage businesses.
"Our broader understanding is that the women working have often faced deceptive recruiting, lies, manipulation, coercion and debt bondage ... essentially indentured servitude," he said. "Arresting them is misunderstanding the ways they are being victimized. If someone's house is robbed, you don't handcuff the person who was robbed."
Myles said the massage industry has become a leading money maker for traffickers, with around 9,000 locations and revenues of roughly $3 billion nationally. By conservative estimates, one woman working for the standard rate in Iowa could make $150,000 annually for a parlor's owners, though she may not be paid anything other than tips.
Many of the trafficked women are lured to the U.S. by the promise of work. Caught in the sex trade, they often overstay their visas and remain in the country illegally. Others are recruited online or through social networks from within the U.S., Myles said.
Cities fight back with ordinances
A report this month in the New York Times named Iowa as one of several destinations where women, "typically Chinese, but also Korean, Thai and East European," are sent after coming to the country and learning the trade.
From Cedar Rapids to Iowa City to Des Moines to Council Bluffs, parlors have opened in plain sight in historic buildings, strip malls, run-down commercial properties, and next to cafes and bars. Traditionally, they advertise Asian massage, but more recently names have advertised foot massage and reflexology.
In some cases, local ordinances, passed largely in the past two and a half years, allow police to check for state massage licenses and screen out owners with questionable criminal histories. Such ordinances have also given police more authority to check for illegal activity.
In places like Urbandale and Johnston, vigilance by local police and city leaders has succeeded in putting parlors out of operation and preventing new ones from opening.
Johnston’s ordinance came about after a 2013 bust that resulted in the arrests of three women. A subsequent probe revealed trafficked women who had been performing massages and sex acts were living in the basement.
Mayor Paula Dierenfeld said local officials learned later they were further victimizing women who already were being treated inhumanely.
“Obviously there is sex trafficking going on out there,” Dierenfeld said. “Anytime that occurs, it’s something we should all be outraged and offended by.”
The ordinance Johnston adopted requires massage businesses to apply for a business license, which allows for a criminal background check. Those checks have prevented two new massage businesses from opening, Dierenfeld said.
No parlors advertising erotic Asian massage are currently operating in the city, according to Rubmaps.com.
Operations run like organized crime, official says
In 2016, Gov. Terry Branstad signed into law a bill that gave cities more authority to require licenses for massage parlors.
Since then, Iowa’s Board of Massage has referred about 18 cases of suspected criminal activity or unlicensed massage to law enforcement.
Still, business remains brisk: The National Human Trafficking Hotline received 218 calls in 2017 from Iowa, the last full calendar year reported.
By far, illicit massage is a top industry for those trafficked in the state, a truism nationally, according to Polaris.
Duax, the assistant U.S. attorney, said some sort of interstate crime typically has to be involved for federal authorities to become involved in a human trafficking case
Polaris encourages law enforcement networks to work across jurisdictions. It also stresses providing sex trafficking victims access to legal and social services, and not punishing them with arrest.
Myles said that the people driving the industry function like organized crime, usually with shared ownership across multiple locations, and that law enforcement in turn needs to treat the operations like organized crime.
"One owner may own five, and within that, there are multiple sub-roles: Someone who does recruiting, a broker, a transporter, a manager ... a courier picking up cash and making deposits, and then there's a mastermind pulling all the strings," he said.
"When resources are deployed, they need to try to tackle the entire enterprise. We're trying to get beyond the whack-a-mole approach and get to dismantling a network."
How Dubuque case was built
In Dubuque in 2017, police and members of a vice and narcotics squad spent months tracking the men who frequented the two parlors owned by Hart, a criminal complaint shows.
They conducted surveillance for three weeks, made arrests, initiated interviews with customers and obtained warrants to check Hart's phone records and bank accounts. They went through trash at the home he shared with Li and at the parlors, finding schedules, receipts and towels stained with semen.
Bank records of Hart and Li show payments to Rubmaps, Backpage and Craigslist, a criminal compliant says. Several thousand dollars in cash was found in Hart's home and both businesses.
Investigators also found itineraries and copies of airline tickets, some of which were billed to Hart, for travel involving individuals with Asian names. And they found handwritten notes with statements written in English and Chinese, such as “I only work for tips” and “I control my own life.”
Just before officers executed a search warrant on May 2, 2017, two undercover officers were sent into both locations. Both said they were solicited for sex near the end of their massages.
After officers entered the TuiNa Studio, Hart spoke to them via a baby monitor he used as part of a surveillance system. He told officers he had been watching them from an app on his phone and was at the dentist’s office.
He and Li have since been released on bond.
How widespread is human trafficking?
According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline and Polaris BeFree Textline:
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Published 3:00 PM EDT Mar 20, 2019
This story is the first of three parts.
The men who frequented the two Dubuque massage parlors told stories almost identical to those of other johns across the country.
Flower Garden Massage and 485 TuiNa Studio advertised, like others, on sites like Craigslist, Backpage and Rubmaps. For $60 and a tip that often ranged from $20 to $40, those who frequented the parlors got a massage that finished with a “happy ending.” No questions asked.
What happened inside the parlors is now commonplace across Iowa, according to multiple city and law enforcement officials.
What happened to their owner, John R. Hart, and his wife, Meirong Li, after they were arrested was not.
Hart, 67, and Li, 55, face a trial May 7 in district court in what is believed to be the only felony human trafficking and pimping case prosecuted in Iowa related to the illicit massage industry.
Though cities across the state have taken steps to pass ordinances and legislators have moved to enhance penalties to curtail the spread of illicit massage, the businesses are flourishing, undeterred by law enforcement, a Watchdog investigation found.
Low-level arrests thus far across the state typically have targeted the women forced or manipulated into the trade, most often Chinese foreign nationals with few, if any language skills, police reports show.
In Iowa, at least 172 businesses were listed in mid-March on Rubmaps.com, a site that allows paid subscribers to review workers in the sex trade and share tips for not getting arrested. That's far more than when Watchdog first examined the growing industry in November 2016.
Federal investigators used the "where fantasy meets reality" website to help track and nab hundreds of men who paid for sex in the massive eight-month sting that ensnared New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft in Florida.
Kraft, a billionaire friend of President Donald Trump, is accused of soliciting prostitution at Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida. A spokesperson for Kraft has said he did not engage "in any illegal activity," but police have said there is video evidence.
Trafficking experts say similar stings are beginning to happen more often across the country, including busts in the past two months related to trafficking and money laundering in Seattle and Dallas.
But not anywhere in Iowa, Watchdog found.
In Iowa, authorities have hit dead ends when the women involved in stings and routine checks don't cooperate.
"They don't talk," said Tim Duax, an assistant U.S. attorney out of Sioux City. "That doesn't mean that we don't look at these cases. But the victims don't cooperate in the same way that other victims do."
Des Moines rated top 100 site for trafficking
In 2016, the Polaris Network, a nonprofit that runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline, named Des Moines one of the top 100 human trafficking sites in the U.S. based in part on the activity they were tracking on sites like Rubmaps.com. Scraping data, they found eight suspected illicit massage parlors in Des Moines and 45 across Iowa at the time.
Even after numerous businesses have been closed, 13 Asian massage or reflexology businesses remained open this month in Des Moines,13 in Cedar Rapids and 13 in Davenport. Dozens of others are scattered around state, including six each in Waterloo and Sioux City, five in West Des Moines, three in Clive and one in Waukee. (All told, 173 Asian massage parlors have been listed on the site since 2014, but not all of them are still open.)
"We believe cities and states across the country need to do more about this," said Bradley Myles, Polaris' executive director. "There's a pretty significant difference between the volume and size of how big the problem is and the resources being deployed to tackle it."
Iowa is supposed to have some of the best laws in the country to combat sex trafficking. Those convicted of buying or selling another person, including johns who patronize massage parlors for sex, are supposed to do mandatory jail time.
But no one has been prosecuted for human trafficking under Iowa's state statute, 710A.2, since 2015, according to Steve Michael, administrator for Iowa’s Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning.
Hart and Li, who have pleaded not guilty, would be the first. Their attorneys did not return phone calls seeking comment.
No federal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorneys' offices in the northern and southern districts of Iowa have convicted any traffickers in the illicit massage industry, spokespeople for both offices confirmed.
In a statement, Marc Krickbaum, U.S. Attorney for the southern district, said prosecuting sex trafficking is a high priority for his office. He pointed to 10 trafficking cases since 2017.
But none of those cases were related to the illicit massage industry, the leading reason for sex trafficking in the state, according to the calls to Polaris' national trafficking hotline.
“I encourage all victims of sex trafficking to report these abuses to law enforcement," Krickbaum said. "Your report will be taken seriously, and we will fight for justice on your behalf.”
Women more often arrested than customers
Massage-related calls from Iowa to the National Human Trafficking Hotline have outnumbered those from other surrounding Midwestern states — except Illinois — in a two-year span from June 2016 to June 2018, according to Polaris.
But when massage parlors are busted, the men who frequent them are less likely to be charged than the women working there, state data show.
And the number of people arrested for purchasing sex in Iowa actually dropped by more than half from 2016, the year when Watchdog readers first raised concerns, to 2018.
In 2016, 34 people were arrested for purchasing sex. Last year, the number was 12, according to the Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning.
In 2016, 86 arrests were made for prostitution. In 2018, there were just 24, state data show.
Myles, of the Polaris Network, said his organization is very concerned that investigations continue to target women working in the massage businesses.
"Our broader understanding is that the women working have often faced deceptive recruiting, lies, manipulation, coercion and debt bondage ... essentially indentured servitude," he said. "Arresting them is misunderstanding the ways they are being victimized. If someone's house is robbed, you don't handcuff the person who was robbed."
Myles said the massage industry has become a leading money maker for traffickers, with around 9,000 locations and revenues of roughly $3 billion nationally. By conservative estimates, one woman working for the standard rate in Iowa could make $150,000 annually for a parlor's owners, though she may not be paid anything other than tips.
Many of the trafficked women are lured to the U.S. by the promise of work. Caught in the sex trade, they often overstay their visas and remain in the country illegally. Others are recruited online or through social networks from within the U.S., Myles said.
Cities fight back with ordinances
A report this month in the New York Times named Iowa as one of several destinations where women, "typically Chinese, but also Korean, Thai and East European," are sent after coming to the country and learning the trade.
From Cedar Rapids to Iowa City to Des Moines to Council Bluffs, parlors have opened in plain sight in historic buildings, strip malls, run-down commercial properties, and next to cafes and bars. Traditionally, they advertise Asian massage, but more recently names have advertised foot massage and reflexology.
In some cases, local ordinances, passed largely in the past two and a half years, allow police to check for state massage licenses and screen out owners with questionable criminal histories. Such ordinances have also given police more authority to check for illegal activity.
In places like Urbandale and Johnston, vigilance by local police and city leaders has succeeded in putting parlors out of operation and preventing new ones from opening.
Johnston’s ordinance came about after a 2013 bust that resulted in the arrests of three women. A subsequent probe revealed trafficked women who had been performing massages and sex acts were living in the basement.
Mayor Paula Dierenfeld said local officials learned later they were further victimizing women who already were being treated inhumanely.
“Obviously there is sex trafficking going on out there,” Dierenfeld said. “Anytime that occurs, it’s something we should all be outraged and offended by.”
The ordinance Johnston adopted requires massage businesses to apply for a business license, which allows for a criminal background check. Those checks have prevented two new massage businesses from opening, Dierenfeld said.
No parlors advertising erotic Asian massage are currently operating in the city, according to Rubmaps.com.
Operations run like organized crime, official says
In 2016, Gov. Terry Branstad signed into law a bill that gave cities more authority to require licenses for massage parlors.
Since then, Iowa’s Board of Massage has referred about 18 cases of suspected criminal activity or unlicensed massage to law enforcement.
Still, business remains brisk: The National Human Trafficking Hotline received 218 calls in 2017 from Iowa, the last full calendar year reported.
By far, illicit massage is a top industry for those trafficked in the state, a truism nationally, according to Polaris.
Duax, the assistant U.S. attorney, said some sort of interstate crime typically has to be involved for federal authorities to become involved in a human trafficking case
Polaris encourages law enforcement networks to work across jurisdictions. It also stresses providing sex trafficking victims access to legal and social services, and not punishing them with arrest.
Myles said that the people driving the industry function like organized crime, usually with shared ownership across multiple locations, and that law enforcement in turn needs to treat the operations like organized crime.
"One owner may own five, and within that, there are multiple sub-roles: Someone who does recruiting, a broker, a transporter, a manager ... a courier picking up cash and making deposits, and then there's a mastermind pulling all the strings," he said.
"When resources are deployed, they need to try to tackle the entire enterprise. We're trying to get beyond the whack-a-mole approach and get to dismantling a network."
How Dubuque case was built
In Dubuque in 2017, police and members of a vice and narcotics squad spent months tracking the men who frequented the two parlors owned by Hart, a criminal complaint shows.
They conducted surveillance for three weeks, made arrests, initiated interviews with customers and obtained warrants to check Hart's phone records and bank accounts. They went through trash at the home he shared with Li and at the parlors, finding schedules, receipts and towels stained with semen.
Bank records of Hart and Li show payments to Rubmaps, Backpage and Craigslist, a criminal compliant says. Several thousand dollars in cash was found in Hart's home and both businesses.
Investigators also found itineraries and copies of airline tickets, some of which were billed to Hart, for travel involving individuals with Asian names. And they found handwritten notes with statements written in English and Chinese, such as “I only work for tips” and “I control my own life.”
Just before officers executed a search warrant on May 2, 2017, two undercover officers were sent into both locations. Both said they were solicited for sex near the end of their massages.
After officers entered the TuiNa Studio, Hart spoke to them via a baby monitor he used as part of a surveillance system. He told officers he had been watching them from an app on his phone and was at the dentist’s office.
He and Li have since been released on bond.
How widespread is human trafficking?
According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline and Polaris BeFree Textline:
- More than 49,000 total cases of human trafficking have been reported to the hotline in the last 10 years.
- The hotline annually receives multiple reports of human trafficking cases in each of the 50 states and D.C.
- The number of human trafficking cases that Polaris learns about in the U.S. increases every year.
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