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US Officials, Banks Investigate Massage Parlors as Branches of Global Trafficking Rings: Sources

By Daniel Bethencourt

Illicit massage parlors, which often distinguish themselves with sexually suggestive advertising and suspiciously late operating hours, have been the targets of prostitution-related investigations for years. But a handful of U.S. federal, state and local law enforcement agencies now examine the businesses as potentially intertwined affiliates and branches of larger human-trafficking networks with ties to Asia and elsewhere, three law enforcement and industry sources told ACAMS moneylaundering.com. Some agencies have pursued this approach since at least 2015, when investigators with the Arizona attorney general’s office began seizing millions of dollars-worth of real estate linked to traffickers and promoting the strategy at...

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