The madame of the brothel community that operated within the suburbs of Boston and Washington D.C. will spend 4 years in jail.
Prosecutor Lindsey Weinstein requested for six years in jail for Han “Hanna” Lee, of Cambridge, for the “staggering” association “in which she made millions off of other women.”
Lee was indicted on prices of conspiracy to commit, persuade, induce, and coerce a number of people to journey interstate or international commerce to have interaction in prostitution and, rely two, cash laundering conspiracy. The Korean nationwide can be topic to deportation.
Decide Julie E. Kobick on Wednesday in federal courtroom in Boston sentenced Lee to 4 years in jail for being what Kobick described as “the leader” of the “extensive” and “sophisticated” community and cash laundering scheme.
Lee, when she pleaded responsible final September, insisted that whereas she ran a prison enterprise, “it is not a fact that I controlled these women” and that the intercourse staff she employed joined and stayed within the operation underneath “their own free will.” She continued this theme at sentencing, when she described herself as somebody who cared about her staff and tried to make the job, which she herself labored for years, simpler.
“Those workers who I love in that kind of business, they usually have a bad background, and every worker has their own stories. Some were abused, some husbands abused them,” she mentioned via an interpreter. “I heard all those stories and I tried to help them.”
In response to federal prosecutors, Lee recruited Korean ladies to work as prostitutes in her community of flats in Cambridge, Watertown and within the Virginia suburbs of D.C.
Lee’s alleged co-brothel operators Junmyung Lee and James Lee, who prosecutors say should not associated, have additionally pleaded responsible for his or her roles.
However whereas the operators’ circumstances are coming to their ends, the circumstances towards their alleged clients are solely simply starting.
The first spherical of possible trigger hearings occurred on Friday, with the Cambridge District Courtroom clerk Justice of the Peace discovering possible trigger to situation prison complaints towards all 12, although solely two of them confirmed as much as the listening to.
In all, authorities sought prison complaints towards 28 alleged intercourse consumers, which suggests there are 16 extra left to undergo possible trigger hearings. These hearings are scheduled for the subsequent two Fridays.
It is a growing story.
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