- Investigators believe a network of high-end brothels operating in the Boston and D.C. areas was a honey trap to ensnare politicians and government officials
- But whether the plot was intended to aid Russia, China, South Korea – or even Israel – remains to be determined
- Clients, believed to include members of Congress, military officers, and national security contractors, have not yet been unmasked and charged
Intelligence experts are becoming increasingly convinced that six high end brothels in the suburbs of Boston and Washington, D.C. were set up by a foreign nation as an espionage ‘honeytrap’.
They believe the brothels – allegedly masterminded by a 41-year-old South Korean woman – targeted politicians, high ranking government officials and defense contractors.
But the mystery is which country was behind the scheme. Russia, China, Korea itself, or even Israel are al seen as possibly being behind the scheme.
‘Having the Koreans out front could have been a false flag to give China or another country plausible deniability if the plot unraveled,’ a one-time CIA senior operations officer told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.
The brothels were raided in November and prosecutors said they were looking to charge 28 people in Massachusetts alone.
Joshua Levy, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the state said his office will seek ‘accountability for the buyers who fuel the commercial sex industry’.
There was no evident motive to establish two cathouses in the greater Washington area, sources noted emphatically. None of the three defendants live anywhere near the capital and sex workers were flown in from Los Angeles or Las Vegas.
Han Lee, the alleged mastermind, Junmyung Lee, 30, and James Lee, 68 – all South Korean-born U.S. nationals – were charged in November with running the sex ring. The three Lees are not related.
Han and Junmyung both live in the Boston area so the locations of four of the brothels there made sense. James lives in Torrance, a suburb of Los Angeles.
Members of Congress, military officers, and national security contractors who ‘possessed security clearances’ were among the steady customers at the ‘high-end brothels’ run by the ring, prosecutors say.
The ring’s clients, who paid rates of up to $600 an hour, included corporate executives, professors, lawyers, and scientists.
To entice customers, the Lees allegedly set up websites whose purported purpose was helping photographers find nude female models looking for work. Investigators believe the ring had made more than $1 million by the time it was busted.
The lingerie and bikini clad ‘models’ went by names such as Sexy Schu, Venus, Tina, YokoDDD and Tiffany.
The last two were offered as a ‘duo’ for photographers looking for a modeling twosome.
None of the clients have been identified or charged so far, but they could soon be unmasked after federal prosecutors last month announced they are seeking criminal charges.
The probe into ‘their involvement in prostitution is active and ongoing,’ Department of Homeland Security Special Agent Zachary Mitlitsky said in a court affidavit.
A spokeswoman for the US Attorney’s Office in Boston, which is prosecuting the case, cited the same reason in declining to comment on questions about the prostitution ring, including whether the suspects had ties to foreign intelligence.
Experts interviewed by DailyMail.com suspect the brothel scheme was a honeypot.
The twin locations where ring operators selected to set up shop is the first clue, a number of them said.
As the country’s political headquarters, Washington presents a target-rich environment for spies.
In the affidavit, investigators identified six ‘target locations’ where the brothels were based, four in the Boston area (‘Target Locations 4-7’) and two in Virginia (‘Target locations 8 and 9).
Two of the brothels operated from units in luxury apartment buildings in the Virginia suburbs outside the capital, which are each about a 15-minute drive from the White House, Congress, Pentagon and CIA.
The surrounding area is packed with national security giants such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing and General Dynamics.
Boston, where the other four brothels operated, is a haven for defense contractors as well.
It’s also home to top-tier universities such as Harvard and MIT that train government and military officials, and produce reports for the Pentagon and CIA.
The ring didn’t have anyone based near D.C. as far as can be determined. Suspects had to fly in and out of town with a rotating cast of sex workers, set them up at the Virginia apartments and deal with routine business matters.
The Washington operations would have significantly increased costs, created logistical headaches, and greatly heightened risks.
From a practical standpoint, it would have been easier to simply open two more brothels in Boston – unless the primary goal of the ring’s operators wasn’t maximizing profits but intelligence gathering.
‘The most valuable information in Washington and Boston are government secrets,’ a former foreign spy who is well acquainted with honeypots told DailyMail.com.
‘If you open a prostitution business that caters to wealthy clients in those cities, you’ll get a lot of people walking through the doors that have access to them.’
Former CIA Special Agent Nic McKinley, who now leads Deliver Fund, a nonprofit that works with law enforcement to combat human trafficking, echoed the point.
‘If this had been a pure cash play, massage parlors are easier to set up, have lower overhead costs and print money,’ he said.
‘But they wouldn’t have pulled in affluent customers from government and national security circles.’
The first step for any intelligence agency looking to recruit a foreign asset is preparing a targeting analysis to pinpoint top prospects.
Those that make the final cut must have access to the desired information and a history that suggests they would betray their country if the proper incentive were offered.
Spy agencies deem financial stress, greed, marital problems and feeling underappreciated at work to be exploitable vulnerabilities.
Extramarital affairs and sexual promiscuity and deviance are other helpful vulnerabilities, which is why honeypots are a time-honored practice of intelligence agencies.
The brothels in Virginia were situated in Unit 245 at the Avalon Mosaic in the quiet suburban town of Fairfax and Unit 649 of the nearby Hanover Tysons.
The two units had large bedrooms and comfortably furnished living room areas where clients could unwind over drinks with their companions afterwards.
In this relaxing atmosphere, a government official might feel the urge to impress an attractive young woman by dropping names of prominent colleagues and holding forth about his important responsibilities at work.
Aspiring clients had to submit a membership application before they could book an appointment.
Required documentation included government-issued ID, phone and email contacts, employer information and credit card records, according to court records.
Bizarrely, numerous political, military and business officials provided it all without blinking an eye and proceeded to have sex in an apartment that for all they knew was outfitted with equipment to record video and audio footage.
‘Finding idiots like this would be pure gold for an intelligence service running a honeypot,’ said the retired foreign spy.
A retired CIA senior operations officer was equally flabbergasted.
‘This is at the level of a Nigerian prince scam,’ she said.
Ring operators would have taken precautions to ensure a prospective client wasn’t actually an undercover cop, but the level of vetting of brothel members suggests the proprietors may have built a client base heavily laden with government insiders by design, not chance.
The details of the investigation included pictures of meticulous client records with names and dates – which have exposed tons of professionals in elite industries for paying upwards of $600 per hour for sexual encounters with predominately Asian women
That’s exactly the way honeypots are intended to work, the retired foreign operative asserted.
‘The goal is to create a chain reaction,’ he said. ‘Draw people from your narrow group of targets, provide them with great service and wait for them to invite friends and colleagues from the same circles.’
None of the three suspects have known prior criminal records. The biggest mark against any of them is that James Lee received more than $500,000 in potentially fraudulent Covid relief funds.
Their clean records are especially surprising because prosecutors allege at least some of the sex workers were trafficked, which would mean an organized crime group almost certainly played a role.
It’s simple nowadays for spy services – and relative amateurs as well – to obtain compromising material on targets by hacking their phones or stealing it from client databases of online companies that sell illicit or seedy sex, said a former CIA counterintelligence officer.
He cited reports from earlier this year that revealed a conservative Catholic group in Colorado spent millions of dollars to buy mobile tracking data in order to out priests using gay hookup apps.
But most of the sources said the brothel scheme’s risk-reward ratio wouldn’t deter a foreign service from trying to pull it off, but encourage it.
‘Paying for sex may reveal a character flaw, but you have to know a lot more to assess if a target is corruptible,’ said a retired senior CIA officer who served in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
‘You’re not going to find what you need by scrolling through a list of names you stole from hookers.com.’
In a well-executed honeypot, the women who serve as the bait build personal relationships with the marks, tease out information that helps assess their weaknesses and test what they’re willing to do.