Note that the headline doesn’t mean to say “managed by the P.R.C.” but “managed by a bunch of people with pinyin-spelled Chinese names.”
When China’s president, Hu Jintao, visited Seattle earlier this year, much ado was made over the fact that Seattle was a good place for Chinese interests do to business.
Apparently not just shoe importers and iPod retailers were thinking so.
Today, police in Seattle arrested seven people on charges of running a prostitution ring that “imported” young women from Asia–China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and Laos–after each young woman may have been expected to pay upwards of $50,000 as an “import fee,” which they were indentured to pay back. Two more in the ring were arrested in Los Angeles.
Oh yeah: and by “imported,” we mean in shipping containers.
The names of seven of those arrested suggest persons most likely (but yes, not necessarily) from Mainland China because of their pinyin spelling (i.e. not from Hong Kong or Taiwan):
According to the AP story breaking this news,
All were charged Thursday in U.S. District Court here. Eight are accused of conspiracy to transport individuals in furtherance of prostitution and conspiracy to transport and harbor illegal aliens. Four also are charged with conspiracy to engage in money laundering. A ninth person is charged with conspiracy to transport individuals in furtherance of prostitution.
If convicted, they face up to 20 years in prison.
Details on the prostitution ring surfaced in April 2004, when the Eastside Narcotics Task Force raided the Apple Spa in Bellevue after determining it was a front for prostitution, federal officials said.
Investigators with the FBI, U.S. Customs and Enforcement, and Seattle police spent the next 21 months using confidential informants, court-approved wiretaps, and Global Positioning Satellite units to identify participants in the larger operation. –Nine charged in international sex-trafficking ring
(The Apple Spa in Bellevue. Yeah, that would be less than a ten-minute drive from my house.)
The initial news reports coming out don’t make it clear whether these nine perpetrators are U.S. citizens, permanent residents, or foreign nationals, but if they’re the latter, look for another round of calls for tighter immigration restrictions from some quarters.
As well as better checks of shipping containers, I’d suggest.
August 2006
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