Federal agents, Seattle Police and King County Sheriff’s Deputies raided three businesses in the Seattle area earlier this afternoon as part of a prostitution and money laundering investigation.
Donald Kerry Frey, Nguyen Tran Nguyen and Minh Thuy Thi Nguyen have been indicted in US District Court for allegedly running brothels out of the Aloha Tanning Resort in Renton, the Avalon Spa on Aurora in Seattle and the Malibu Tanning Spa in Tukwila.
In the last three years, the indictment says, Nguyen Tran Nguyen purchased approximately seventy airline tickets for “numerous Asian females” to travel between California and Washington to work in the brothels. Records say Nguyen provided Frey with thousands of dollars of proceeds from the brothels.
In an unrelated case, Seattle Police also served a search warrant on another Aurora spa just a few blocks north of the Avalon Spa earlier this year to investigate another alleged brothel.
Between June and August 2008, records say undercover VICE officers were offered sex at Paradise Tanning on 100th and Aurora. The business was temporarily shut down before being reopened under another name.
Police have apparently been working with the property owner to evict the business.
HaHA! One of my friends once went to the Avalon spa looking for a massage. Boy, was HE surprised..
I can only assume that SPD solved all of the open violent crime cases in the city first.
Ah yes, paying for sex… the most dangerous and evil crime ever committed in the history of humankind.
On the plus side, my dick is extremely tan.
hold judgement until we learn whether this was sex slavery, where very poor women – in exchange for “safe passage” (in shipping containers) to the US – are forced to have sex to repay their host.
here’s one such case locally from a few years back:
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.c…
So is Avalon going to stop advertising in the back of the Stranger, then?
Should we assume no hard-working American girls want these jobs?
“Nguyen Tran Nguyen purchased purchased approximately”
Even a read-over by YOU would have caught this error, you fucking hack.
non, it was the end of the day on a Tuesday, which means I’ve been busy getting stuff ready for the paper edition. If you’ve got such a problem with it, feel free to come by the office and we can discuss it in person. Or you could just kiss my fucking ass.
How’s stalking Adrian going?
Golly gee willikers, I sure feel a lot safer now.
Can someone please open one of these happy-ending parlors in Belltown? I hear they need a few more beat (off?) cops….
The other side of this is that the victims are the women who are shipped like cattle from Asia to work in these places. Sure, there are “sensible” women who make the choice to be a sex worker, but more often than not it’s soe young girl from Asia or the former USSR sold into slavery.
When I was younger, and dumber, Iwent to one of these places. It was a very sad experience for both of us.
What, no cracks on it being a “lose lose” situation for Nguyen Nguyen?
@12 – Zing!
So who is Exotic Tan on Lake City Way bribing to stay open?
Jonah, the last time I thought about Adrian was the last time you brought him up the last time I criticized you.
Got anything else?
This quote from the story in the PI:
“The sales manager of Mattress Liquidators, next door to the Avalon, also applauded agents and police for the crackdown. “They need to clean up this neighborhood,” said Karsten Logan. “From 85th to 105th, it’s kind of a prostitution area.”
You’d think a cut-rate mattress outlet would be sad to see volume customer go out of business.
@16 –
As if busting a brothel will have any impact on the number of streetwalkers in the area. In fact, I’ll bet if it wasn’t for the bust, the Avalon’s neighbors had no idea it was a brothel.
why bust now? why didn’t spd bust’em year ago? two or three years ago? I am really curious? did something happen within last couple weeks???
Mahtli69, I agree with most of what you say, but you really do go on to ruin your own point. And you do so in a way that is very frustrating, similar to the non-apology-apology: though everything you say is true, what you are really saying is clear and annoying.
Of course “shame on the cop” if they said something rude. That is 100% true 100% of the time (even if not illegal). Just like you could say, “shame on the cop if they slapped the woman first and then lied about it.” That would also be 100% true 100% of the time. Because of that, it is difficult to argue against.
Why is okay to jump to that judgment though? The logical jump is one step, not two. One step says, I think the cop might have said something to provoke her. Once you move on to shaming —>>>IF<<— that is what happened, you are talking about a completely hypothetical situation, while at the same time, still indirectly blaming the cop. The cop in this case, is the victim.
It does seems highly probably that there was an exchange that took place before the slapping. I would even be okay with someone saying, “I want to hear the whole story before I cast judgment either way.” Once you move on to shaming one of the parties — even though you have ever so cleaver/annoying IF in there — you actually cross the line.
oops! that was supposed to be a comment on this post:
http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/11/no_r…
how did that happen?