Dressed in a white lab coat – with apparently nothing underneath – the woman told state investigators that she, along with others, was a prostitute at one of the eight massage parlors raided in the city two years ago.

She took agents to a large room inside the Hot Sun Spa on West Market Street with four mattresses on the floor. She said that’s where she slept, pointed out her suitcase and told them she was at the spa because she could make a good living doing what she was doing, that she was free to leave ”any time she wanted to” and that when they were done questioning here, ”she was going to pack her bag and leave to go home.”

Home for her, like many of the women questioned during ”Operation SNAG,” could be New York, Colorado, California or Korea.

She was among dozens of people state agents interviewed as part of their yearlong probe into whether human trafficking, racketeering, money laundering – and possibly other illegal activities – were taking place at the spas.

Two years later, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and Trumbull County prosecutors say that the investigation is ”technically” still open, but appears to be at a standstill as neither county nor city prosecutors have made any moves to charge anyone.

Despite many statements from men saying they paid for sex, and finding naked men with women in bikinis, an assistant county prosecutor said no charges would be filed, partly because the city had legitimized the spas with ordinances regulating them.

He said charges could be filed at the city level. Tribune Chronicle attempts to contact Warren Law Director Greg Hicks have been unsuccessful for more than a week.

Investigative notes from the county prosecutor’s office and the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the investigative arm of DeWine’s office, were recently released to the Tribune Chronicle. The notes reveal statements from spa employees, surveillance results and information about evidence collected during a sweep of the spas on May 30, 2012.

In at least one of the spas, the workers resided there and slept in sleeping bags on the floor, four to a room. During the raids, agents found bags of condoms, passports, laptops, ledgers and cash, including more than $20,000 in a fake floorboard at the Tokyo Spa.

Although credit cards were used sporadically to make payments, most of the men paid in cash.

The cash seized at the eight spas totaled close to $104,000.

No one claimed the money and Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge W. Wyatt McKay agreed to a prosecutor’s request for it to be divided among Warren police, DeWine’s office and the county prosecutor’s office.

Court records hinted that some of the women were sex trafficking victims. However, prosecutors said they weren’t able to prove that.

The women have not been charged with any crimes. Neither have the spa operators. Nor have the hundreds of men caught on cameras coming and going from the spas. The men’s names were redacted on the investigative notes.

The investigation

In May 2011, about a year before the investigation was launched, the North East Ohio Coalition on Rescue and Restore (NEOCORR) and the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative asked DeWine’s office to investigate whether human trafficking was taking place at the spas.

Since the attorney general’s office does not have original jurisdiction in criminal cases, DeWine had BCI agents ask then-Warren police Chief Timothy Bowers if the state could help. Bowers told them he was aware of the situation but agreed that state assistance would help.

That is when he made an official request for BCI’s assistance.

Isabel Seavey, NEOCORR co-director, was among a group of citizens who complained publicly about illegal activity taking place in the Warren spas for years without any crackdown from local authorities.

It did not take BCI long, with remote cameras clandestinely placed on property outside the spas, to track many of the hundreds of men – businessmen, truck drivers and salesmen among them – who frequented the businesses by identifying them through the recordings and by registrations of the vehicles they drove.

Agents met with some of the men at various restaurants near their homes, including McDonald’s and the Food Court at Southern Park Mall in Boardman.

Some of the men tracked down through registrations claimed friends or relatives, including brothers or sons, had been using the vehicles. However, many of the men interviewed told investigators similar stories of paying for sex at each of the spas. Investigators ran with the information in exchange for immunity from criminal prosecution.

When the raids started, local police and state agents were met by naked men and scantily clad women – some of whom tried to hide. Investigators described various spas as having bedrooms, bathroom / shower facilities, kitchen areas, steam rooms, closets and storage areas.

Investigators collected sex toys, semen samples, miscellaneous bondage restraints, edible panties, used and unused condoms, pornographic materials, passports, nighties and teddies, and large amounts of cash. They found various papers with Korean writing inside at least one spa.

They discovered rooms with beds or tables, and false floors containing large amounts of cash and numerous condoms. The men described paying up to $300 a visit in exchange for a multitude of sex acts ranging from oral to intercourse.

Inside one spa, agents found an unclothed man covered with a towel lying face down on a massage table. A man in another room was sitting on a massage table and he was with an Asian female employee who wore a light-colored lab coat.

Inside the Tokyo Spa, agents found a woman behind a fake wall.

At the Fantasy Spa, a customer was found unclothed with a towel covering his groin area. Agents stated a bedroom there was ”obviously being used by multiple persons, but was unoccupied.”

Agents found three Vietnamese women hiding in the furnace room and another one hiding behind a clothes dryer in a separate room. They were dressed in lingerie.

Four bags of condoms and $22,850 in cash were found in a storage area under the carpet in a closet.

Some clients told investigators they believed many of the women ”who serviced them” may have been part of a circuit, moving from Korea to New York City to Trumbull County. Many of the women spoke fragmented English, saying little other than ”hello” and ”goodbye,” and that it seemed the spas in Warren were connected to one another, they said.

At least one customer, a Trumbull County man, stated he suspected that some of the women didn’t want to be there. Some of the women told agents they lived at the spas where they worked.

One spa employee told investigators a man called a ”jockey” transported women from New York City to work in Warren’s spas. The jockeys also transported the women to Victoria’s Secret in Eastwood Mall, where they would purchase lingerie.

Witnesses told officials they believed many of the workers were illegal aliens.

Seavey said the coalition’s goal was never for the spas to be closed. Still, she is disappointed that there are no plans to charge any of the business owners / operators or customers.

”We didn’t want there to be human trafficking. We just wanted to make sure women were not being held against their will,” she said.

How the spas operated

Customers told investigators that when they entered the spas, they typically gave $35 to $50 to an ”older” woman at the door for ”the massage,” and then received a shower massage or table shower from a younger female in a private room.

One man stated that he gave $100 to the younger female, usually in her 30s, for ”the sexual contact of his choosing.”

Some of the men told agents they saw different women with each visit and that employees were not there for more than a few months.

One man told agents the females would not push the sale of sexual activity until they got to know them.

Many of the men said they learned of the spas through newspaper, magazine and online ads, and by word-of-mouth.

One man stated that he traveled from the Cleveland-Akron area to avoid ”being discovered locally that he participates in such contact.”

At least one customer asked a female investigator to leave during his interview so she would not hear him recount his encounters at the spa.

Two spas – Tiger Spa and Sunny Health Spa – still operate in the city.

Tiger Spa was closed for repairs during the raid. Since Sunny Health Spa shared an entrance with another business, investigators conducting surveillance could not determine which business the customers were entering.

On April 1, 2013, a Warren Health Department sanitarian walked into Sunny Health Spa and found a bikini-clad worker helping a naked male in a shower. Its license was suspended for 30 days, but no charges have been filed.

Defense attorney Harry DePietro, who represented the owner, Unsuk Cho, argued that a naked customer did not prove prostitution was taking place. He said that according to massage parlor regulations, no genitalia should be exposed during a massage. However, taking a shower is not during a massage, he argued.

Statements to agents

From customers:

A salesman who made trips to Warren for business said he visited the Hong Kong Health Spa, receiving a massage his first time. On subsequent visits, he was ”provided with a ‘Happy Ending”’ from an Asian female employee approximately 30 years old who wore a short skirt and low-cut top, and spoke broken English.

One man told investigators that at the Sun Spa, a female would sometimes lead him by his genitalia from one room to another.

One man, who stated he previously worked in the auto industry, took clients to the Sun Spa, where he had been going for about 12 years.

One man told agents he had visited several of the spas and that the process was ”pretty much the same scenario” at all of them. He stated he had never seen any male employees or any females he believed were underage.

From employees:

One woman told agents she was a cook and did laundry and cleaning at the Tokyo Health Spa on Parkman Road. She said she received $1,000 a month for her work at the spa and that the girls who worked there provided massages to the customers.

She said she did not know of any illegal activities at the spa, and that the owner was a Caucasian American man. She said she lived at the spa, where she had a room.

An employee of Ocean Spa stated that she had arrived in Warren only hours before the raids and that she had been told she would be paid $15 per massage, plus tips, have free room and board at the spa, and that it was her understanding that ”performing sex acts was not part of the job.”

She stated her permanent address was in Flushing, N.Y., and that she worked at various massage parlors across the country for three-month stints, taking three months of vacation between jobs staying at her apartment in Flushing.

A male Oceans Spa employee told agents he had gotten paid to give the female employees rides to area stores or run errands for them. He told agents he also did repair work and odds and ends at the Fuji Spa.

He stated that he didn’t know anything about prostitution at the spas but stated that if there was any, it was ”probably helping to prevent rapes and other crimes.”

Another man, identified as working at Ocean and Hot Sun spas, stated he ran errands, paid bills, did grocery shopping and transported female employees to and from airports such as Cleveland, Akron and Pittsburgh. He said he never witnessed any sexual acts but believed it was taking place.

One Ocean Spa employee did not know the name of the city she was in, but knew she was in Ohio. She said she had flown from New York to Akron and was brought to Warren by her boss.

Two women questioned at the Gemini Health Spa – one the manager, who said she was married to the owner, and the other an employee – denied knowledge of any illegal activity.

From Owners / Operators:

A man who told agents he was the listed owner / operator of the Fuji Spa on Parkman Road, but his girlfriend, a 50-year-old Korean woman who had been in the country about 18 months, was the actual operator, and that he put the spa in his name to make it easier for her.

He stated that his girlfriend did not participate in prostitution. He did not deny that prostitution took place. He said that some of the men came ”to the spa to talk.”

A woman told agents that she came to America in the 1980s and was a naturalized citizen. She said she came to Ohio from Colorado about 10 years ago.

She told agents that she was living at the spa, but had just purchased a condominium. She stated that the girls lived at the spa. She told investigators that the girls went wherever they wanted and that they were not her slaves.

One woman, who stated she lived at the business, told agents she was the sole owner of record for the Ocean Spa, although she had a silent partner in Atlanta. She denied the business was used for ”illicit purposes.”

She told agents the high turnover rate for her employees was due to the hard work of performing massages. She said she didn’t go into the room during massages, and if something took place behind the closed door, she was unaware of it and didn’t receive payment for it.

A man who identified himself as the license holder of the Fuji Spa during the raid said the business was a legitimate massage parlor, but it was difficult to find ”legal girls with green cards” to work at the spa.

He told investigators he kept in close contact with the Health Department to make sure everything was in order.

Operation SNAG Results

Prosecutors said they were unable to collect enough evidence to link local spa activities to human trafficking.

They could not prove racketeering.

At most, they could possibly make a case for prostitution, but none leading to felony charges.

Chris Becker, assistant Trumbull County prosecutor, said it would be up to the city to pursue misdemeanor prostitution charges.

”The evidence just isn’t there at this point, at least not to file any felony charges, which is what our office would handle,” he said.

Despite the outcome, Becker said the investigation was never for naught because it resulted in the city’s primary goal of shutting down of the spas.

”You don’t always have to charge someone to have a successful case,” he said.

On May 30, 2013, one year after the spa raids, Becker sent an email to BCI explaining why money laundering charges against the massage parlors would not be filed:

• The initial investigation determined there was no evidence of human trafficking;

• Women performing the sexual activity didn’t confess or admit to any type of sexual acts;

• Owners have a defense to any criminal charges due to the City of Warren legitimizing the massage parlor licensing process;

• Owners would argue they were legitimate businesses that were sanctioned by the City of Warren and would state they had no knowledge of their employees engaging in any illegal activities;

• Charging the owners with money laundering under the statute pursuant to the Ohio Revised Code, section 1315.55, ”requires the owners must know the property involved in the transactions is the proceeds of some ‘unlawful act;”’

• If a trial occurred, the state would not be able to prove that the owners had knowledge of illegal activity;

• The only testimony regarding illegal activity occurring came from patrons who were given immunity.

vshank@tribtoday.com