Brothels disguised as massage parlors are no secret in Palm Beach County. Neighbors see the signs all the time: Asian women cooking food on hot plates, hanging laundry behind suburban strip centers and rarely, if ever, leaving.
A cavalcade of customers almost entirely older men. Heeding warning signs spelled out by police β Asian ownership, offers of sex acts on adult websites and complaints from neighbors β The Palm Beach Post identified 95 massage parlors in the county that matched the pattern of those busted last month in Jupiter and Martin County.
Police say the multi-county crackdown disrupted a sprawling prostitution and sex-trafficking network that included Orchids of Asia Day Spa, the Jupiter storefront where police say New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and 24 others solicited prostitutes during four days in January.
The Post examined state records of the active, state-licensed massage establishments in Palm Beach County, then singled out 95 whose services were described as erotic on two X-rated websites monitored by police: rubmaps. In 70 of those locations, state records list corporate officers with Asian surnames, though only eight of those names appear more than once.
While separate corporate ownership could keep police from connecting parlors to one another, The Post also found 17 of the 95 gave the state a common email address. Statewide, massage license holders gave that same email address to the Department of Health, which licenses and inspects massage businesses.
