Three men operated a network of “high-end” brothels in greater Boston and the Washington, D.C. suburbs, Joshua Levy, acting US attorney for Massachusetts, announced Wednesday.
“Pick a profession. They’re probably represented in this case,” Levy said during a Boston press conference announcing charges against James Lee, 68, Torrance, CA; Han Lee, 41, Cambridge, MA; and Junmyung Lee, 30, Dedham, MA.
Brothel clients include “politicians, high tech and pharmaceutical executives, doctors, military officers, government contractors that possess security clearances, professors, lawyers, scientists and accountants (emphasis added).”
The investigation began summer 2022, when Department of Justice “investigators identified several buyers through surveillance phone records and interviews,” Levy said. “There are potentially hundreds of individuals who took these services as commercial sex buyers” in this ongoing investigation.
Why might DOJ be interested in a (voluntary) prostitution ring?
First, in order to book an appointment, the potential client had to provide their full name as well as their “email address, phone number, employer, and reference if they have one” on a website, according to the news release. Levy said required documents included “driver’s license photos.”
Credit card information was also required up front. Some clients “paid a monthly fee.”
That’s a lot of personal, and possibly incriminating, data.
However, services ranging from $350 -$600+ an hour were cash transactions.
Second, the apartments used in this voluntary sex-for-hire scheme were in northern Virginia (Fairfax and Tysons) and greater Boston (Cambridge and Watertown).
Fairfax and Tysons are a hop-and-skip Metro ride from the Pentagon, the White House and the Capitol.
Fairfax County businesses raked in $35,000,000,000 in federal contracts in 2022. Officials claim that:
Fairfax County-based companies receive more federal procurement dollars and high-profile projects than any other locality in the United States. These companies take advantage of the proximity to the Pentagon and other U.S. government agencies like the Department of Defense (DoD), and NASA. Our sought-after location leads to easier access to leading customers, federal regulators, and a network of business partners (emphasis added).
What companies might that be? Bechtel, FreddieMac, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, for example.
The trip from the Pentagon to Tysons at 7 p.m.? About 35 minutes, one transfer.
Boston is a major U.S. tech center. It is also home to aerospace and defense companies like Boeing, GE Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Rayethon.
See why this announcement looks like the tip of an iceberg?
Rolling Stone interviewed Mitchell Epner, former federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of New Jersey:
The arrests, he says, might even be part of a plan “to get people who are just ordinary rich guys to come forward and agree to cooperate in order to help them make their case against the people who are the high-priority targets,” such as “people who have either been compromised and done things that they shouldn’t have done, giving away trade secrets, giving away who knows what, but in some way breaching a duty to keep things secret.” It could be governmental or business-related, he says.
Epner recalls that the last time he saw “this sort of very detailed prosecution, federally, of what appears to be an adult, consensual prostitution ring,” it was centered on Paul Bergrin, a former federal prosecutor who infamously became a defense attorney and then a New Jersey crime lord who took over a brothel. Eventually, he was “convicted of conspiracy to commit first degree murder in helping his clients murder a witness in a federal narcotics investigation,” Epner explains.
Stay tuned.
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Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com