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Bob Kraft Arrested in Sex Sting


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9 hours ago, J.R. Juniors Junior Jr. said:

Slightly off-topic, but did anyone notice that the story broke about three days before  the Kraft scandal that COTA was losing $20 million of state incentive money because it failed to include a required anti-trafficking plan in its application?  Bad timing, Bernie.

http://www.kut.org/post/paperwork-could-cost-circuit-americas-20-million-last-years-f1-race

Yeah we've been talking about it over on the 'COTA seems like it sucks' thread. It's not Bernie any longer. It's Liberty Media (John Malone) running F1 now. COTA/CELOC failing to submit that plan is just mind-bottling.  Pretty stupid to miss something so simple re: something so huge for them.

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4 minutes ago, Rusty Shackelford said:

 


What number did you put on the jersey? 59?

 

My cousin is a huge douche Pats fan.  He’s getting married this summer.  He is super bent about these jokes.  So I’m wearing it to his wedding.  Should be a good time.  But I wanted it tailored so I’m not making the whole event trashy.  

Edited by ChiTownDoc
Oh and I tried but my bourbon soaked brain only came up w 69. I debated 00.
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On 2/26/2019 at 10:48 PM, ChiTownDoc said:

My cousin is a huge douche Pats fan.  He’s getting married this summer.  He is super bent about these jokes.  So I’m wearing it to his wedding.  Should be a good time.  But I wanted it tailored so I’m not making the whole event trashy.  

Does the bachelor party involve a Day Spa?

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On 2/26/2019 at 8:48 PM, ChiTownDoc said:

My cousin is a huge douche Pats fan.  He’s getting married this summer.  He is super bent about these jokes.  So I’m wearing it to his wedding.  Should be a good time.  But I wanted it tailored so I’m not making the whole event trashy.  

He must be a douche if he takes offense to jokes about what the owner of a team he likes is up to. Talk about a who gives a fuck moment.

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8 minutes ago, aggie08 said:

He must be a douche if he takes offense to jokes about what the owner of a team he likes is up to. Talk about a who gives a fuck moment.

Oh, I'm dead serious.  His entire fucking persona is New England sports.  And he actually married my cousin so not a blood relative.  It's disturbing.  And we're all laughing bc this will legit irritate him.  Only break I'll give him is at least he's born and raised out there.  Only thing that could make it worse is if he was a bandwagon turd. 

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49 minutes ago, Hmbre97 said:
On 2/26/2019 at 10:24 PM, ChiTownDoc said:
I just ordered a custom nfl Jersey with ‘KRAFT’ on it.  I have never worn a jersey in my adult life.  How would I go about getting this son of a bitch tailored?
 

PM Iconoclast

I'd do that if I needed a BJ. 

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1 minute ago, ChiTownDoc said:

It's an inside joke...from early Shaggy days.  A fairly legendary thread that was in classics.  I don't recommend going over there though.  Unless you want computer aids. 

Was there since ‘09. Just smartassing a bit.  No foul.

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Homeland Security and Florida Cops Spied on Chinese Massage Workers for Months but Still Couldn't Find Evidence of Human Trafficking

 

By now, the idea that Florida police busted up an international sex slavery ring operating through Chinese massage parlors has firmly taken hold in the national narrative, even though most of the charges, including those levied at Patriots owner Robert Kraft, were misdemeanors for soliciting prostitution. A closer look at the arrests in this operation reveals just how shoddy the reporting on the case has been—and just how little the police statements on TV resemble what they've put in their actual reports.

No one in this case was arrested on suspicion of sex trafficking, forced labor, compelling prostitution, or any other charge that implies force, fraud, or coercion in the arrangement.

Of the workers we know of from police documents (including those who were arrested and those who weren't), all have official massage therapy licenses in good standing. The Asian-owned massage and spa businesses raided across four counties were also licensed and in good standing with the state of Florida.

Police from Vero Beach said in a press release that one woman had been arrested for human trafficking, and Florida news outlets are still running with that story. But a simple check of county court records shows that this is not the case. Like her colleagues, the woman is charged with engaging in prostitution herself, "deriving support" from prostitution, and "racketeering," which sounds serious but just means working with others to accomplish something illegal.

Mutually Trafficking Each Other?

All of the women who were arrested in these stings are being charged with prostitution themselves. They're also facing felony charges for participating in and earning money from each other's sex work. In this way, police have found a sort of loophole that allows them to bring felony charges against sex workers simply for working together.

Some of the women arrested were managers or owners at one of the 10 spas targeted, but others simply worked there themselves, giving massages and sometimes something extra, and occasionally accompanied their managers on errands like going to the store or bank. (Police suggest these instances of them traveling together could mean workers were victims who couldn't be let out of eyesight, and yet they also charge the workers with felony crimes for going along on these tasks.)

Not counting clients like Kraft, nine women and one man are currently facing charges in conjunction with these stings, which come from two separate but similar operations carried out simultaneously on Florida's southeast coast. One involved the participation of Homeland Security Investigations, the Vero Beach Police Department, and the Indian River Beach County Sherriff's Office, while the other included authorities from nearby Martin and Palm Beach counties.

The Palm Beach County and Martin County Stings

sequoia day spa/FacebookThe Palm Beach/Martin operation has been getting the most attention, since it's the one that snagged Kraft. Some have extrapolated from his arrest to assume that all the customers at these massage parlors were rich, white men, and to insinuate that this is isolating them from more severe charges. But by all evidence, soliciting prostitution was the extent of their criminal conduct. And according to the arrest records, at least half of those arrested were men of color. Their listed occupations include an array of manual labor jobs, including "dog grooming," "mover," "roofer," and "painter."

All of the businesses targeted in Palm Beach and Martin counties were legally registered and licensed in the state of Florida; one had opened in 2012, the others in 2016–2018. Orchids of Asia and Sequoia Apple Day Spa both list Hua Zhang as their owner; the other three (Florida Therapy Spa, Cove Day Spa, and Bridge Spa) were owned or run by Ruimei Li.

After at least six months of surveillance and undercover operations at these businesses, police wound up arresting Zhang, Li, and two other women on prostitution and prostitution-related charges. All of the women arrested were Chinese nationals in their late-thirties through fifties, and all of them came to the U.S. legally.

The Indian River Beach County and Orange County Stings

The stings in Indian River Beach and Orange counties netted more than 100 solicitation arrests for customers plus the arrest of six people (five women, one man) associated with the massage businesses. The man is accused of serving as a driver for women who worked temporarily at the spas while visiting from out of town; he has been charged with racketeering. The women are charged with prostitution, racketeering, and deriving support from the proceeds of prostitution. One is also charged with "unlawful transport for the purpose of prostitution."

There is no evidence in initial complaints, the arrest affidavits, the arrest warrants, or subsequent court documents that any of those arrested were using force or deception at the massage businesses. On the warrants, the victim is listed as the State of Florida.

The police documents detail the lengths local cops and federal agents went to in order to show that some men were getting jerked off after their massages. In Orange and Indian River Beach, the investigation dates back to at least August 2018 and involved East Sea Spa, AA Massage, A+ Massage, and East Spa.

First, an undercover Homeland Security agent received massages and asked about add-on sexual services. A police report said that the agent kissed and had his penis touched by the worker but left before anything else could happen.

Then they staked out the businesses, went through their trash and tested it for semen, interviewed men who exited, and followed around the women who managed and worked at the spas. (One very detailed section of arrest affidavits describes two of the arrested women buying condoms.)

Then they got warrants to install hidden cameras in massage rooms and captured weeks' worth of video evidence from within.

If abusive antics were an issue at these places, weeks of hidden camera footage should at least have hinted at it. Instead, nothing on the extensive surveillance footage yielded charges for sex trafficking or other abusive behavior. What it did catch was a bunch of regular massages being given and sometimes additional sexual activity—mostly hand jobs.

Cops Can't Do Math (or Truth)

Police have suggested that "victims" at these businesses were sexually serving 1,500 men per year. But according to arrest documents, their cameras caught an average of about one sexual customer per employee every three days.

Those that were arrested stand accused of engaging in between 3 and 16 paid sex acts apiece throughout the 40-day surveillance period.

Police originally relied on two details to spin the trafficking narrative in the press: Some of the women were living at the massage parlors, and they "weren't allowed to leave." But Martin County Sheriff William Snyder later admitted that the part about not being allowed to leave was false.

Included as evidence that they lived there was the presence of "food and condiments" in a kitchen fridge—pretty standard for workplace kitchens, no? In addition, one of the places had two extra rooms, in which police found beds made with sheets and pillows and dressers holding personal belongings. Police later told reporters these women were sleeping on "cots" and in "squalor," but that's not what their official report says. (It's also worth noting that the one woman police say for sure was briefly staying at one of the spas is also facing the most prostitution charges, so in practice police don't really seem to think sleeping there equates to victimhood.)

In any event, the fact that some women may have temporarily lived in the spare bedrooms needn't speak to anything untoward. Police suggest that some of the workers came in for a short time from other U.S. cities; these rooms could have been temporary crash pads while they were there.

Because these are Asian immigrant women, many people are quick to see visiting from other cities as something salacious and horror-filled. But sex workers (including those unquestionably on the high end of the empowerment and independence spectrum) often "tour" when work is slow in their cities, or to exploit the novelty factor to make money in a concentrated time period elsewhere. The fact that Chinese-American masseuses and sex workers may work together and have informal community ties doesn't make them a vicious sex-slaving conspiracy.

Prices at the different spas varied—they were owned and staffed by different people—but they do not suggest overall that these women were operating at the most desperate level. At the Indian River Beach spas, a regular massage cost $50 and a "happy ending" (manual stimulation of the genitals) was $60 on top of that. Oral sex was an additional $100, and full sex $160. At others spas, women offered different arrangements and prices, which suggests they were setting their own terms.

Most of the women arrested are still being held in county jail. Their bonds have been set in the $200,000 to $800,000 range, and any money they earned working at the massage parlors (as far we know, their only source of income) cannot be used to pay this balance. So far, at least three have entered pleas of not guilty and are asking for jury trials.

The more that comes out about this case, the more it looks like police are just using human trafficking fears to justify their months of undercover massages and their big press announcement about arresting Kraft.

The authorities may eventually find illegal dealings beyond consensual commercial sex, but they certainly haven't yet. Apparently, they chose to go on a national media offensive with the sex-trafficking story before even having a shred of evidence to that effect.

But now that Kraft has made headlines and the national media have milked the story, how many people will care if cops quietly drop the bit about the transnational sex cabal? Will anyone even notice what ultimately happens to these women that police stalked, made secret porn films of, and then locked in cages?

https://reason.com/blog/2019/02/28/homeland-security-spied-on-chinese-women?fbclid=IwAR3VLPbX2fInlivG9Wy3mNNba_JUHrOLUAk96D4RBo0ue9WNVel038Iu9p4

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Back the Blue (balls)?

"First, an undercover Homeland Security agent received massages and asked about add-on sexual services. A police report said that the agent kissed and had his penis touched by the worker but left before anything else could happen."

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On 2/25/2019 at 1:58 PM, Rimbo said:

Well, I can think of two reasons. One, not every single Asian spa is part of the slave/rub-and-tug trade...

You’re saying some of the Asian spas are legit massages? If the massage therapists are legit and legal citizens, why not work at a real spa or a Massage Envy?

these places always scream trafficked Asians offering sex: open 24 hours, tinted windows, etc.

im sure there are exceptions but it has to be a very small percentage. 

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Sex work is illegal.  Anyone engaging in it tends to hide it, especially if they're in a store front.  Again, the sex slave aspect is completely overblown, as almost every sex slave story is.  I would imagine the percentage of actual sex slaves in massage parlors is quite small, if not barely existent.  Cops always lie about this shit, the media always breathlessly reports it, and the public never finds out how full of shit everyone is.

 

 

'No Allegations of Human Trafficking' and 'Women Could've Walked Out' In Florida Massage-Parlor Prostitution Stings

 

 

It's been nearly a week since Florida police started bragging about their big "human trafficking" bust, an operation that pulled in professional football owner Robert Kraft, more than 150 other men, and several Chinese immigrant women associated with Asian spas in Palm Beach County. Police say the spas were fronts for prostitution, that the workers there were victims of sex trafficking, and that their six-month long investigation was time well spent.

Six months is a long time, however, and it's hard to reconcile the cops' timeline with their heroic rhetoric. If the women employed at these businesses were really the victims of "modern slavery," why did police take six months to get them out of that situation? Why did it require repeat intimate undercover visits and building misdemeanor prostitution charges against all sorts of random men before these "heroes" decided to intervene?

It's one of many elements that don't add up with what prosecutors are saying in public and what's actually happened in the case.

At a press conference (partially aired on CNN) today, Palm Beach District Attorney Dave Aronberg spent most of his time talking about the theoretical horrors that could occur in situations like this. "Modern day slavery," as Aronberg called it, "can happen anywhere, including in the peaceful community of Jupiter."

However, no human trafficking charges were filed among the hundreds of (current and coming) prostitution charges, he admitted, adding that first-time offenders (like Robert Kraft) are "very unlikely to get any significant" time behind bars.

"There's no allegation that any defendant engaged in human trafficking," said Aronberg.

Police keep calling the women that worked at Orchids of Asia and the other spas that were part of the sting "trafficking victims." But most have declined to cooperate with police as such.

Martin County Sheriff Snyder told CNN today that police were having trouble getting one woman in custody to "cooperate" in explaining why they would "go and allow themselves to be trafficked."

"They had the ability, they could've walked out into the street and asked for help," he continued, noting that they often worked long hours and cooked food on a hot-plate instead of leaving for meals. "But they didn't."

Instead of taking this as a sign that these women were willingly engaging in this work, police continue to seek ways to explain away this evidence. (And the CNN host asked why they wouldn't "speak their truth.") Snyder claims that one woman said she was afraid people might hurt her family if she cooperated.

This type of claim is made regularly by police in these sorts of investigations. That is convenient, considering they're the only ones allowed to talk to any of the alleged victims and it's an explanation no one can verify, unlike initial claims from law enforcement—now countered by Synder—that massage parlor workers weren't allowed to leave.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft is accused of getting a blow job from one of these women, which the Jupiter Police Department caught on camera during its weeks-long video surveillance of Orchids of Asia Day Spay.

@ohitchcock/TwitterKraft and 24 others originally named were each charged with one or more misdemeanor solicitation charges (top punishment: one year in jail, up to 100 hours of community service, "john school," and a mandatory fine). More than 100 more men are to be charged with solicitation, Palm Beach authorities say. Additionally, an operation in nearby Indian River County yielded at least 138 charges for solicitation.

Several women connected to the spas were also arrested. Lei Wang, 36, was arrested last Tuesday on charges of "maintaining a house of ill fame" and getting proceeds from prostitution. She's being held in Palm Beach County Jail. "Circuit Judge Dina Keever-Agrama told Wang through a Mandarin interpreter that she must prove that any money she posts for her release was not derived from illegal activities," reports the Palm Beach Post.

Another woman from Orchids of Asia, 58-year-old Hua Zhang, is also being held in Palm Beach County Jail on related charges. According to police, Zhang was both the owner of the spa and a sex worker there.

Two other women were also arrested on charges of engaging in prostitution, money laundering, deriving support from the proceeds of prostitution, operating a house of prostitution, and permitting prostitution.

Early reports from local news said that all of this was "tied to an international human-trafficking and prostitution ring," but police have offered no evidence of that so far. The whole case is reminiscent of a 2016 sting in Seattle, announced with similarly dire fanfare but yielding nothing but prostitution findings (and a lot of misery for those targeted by police).

Residents of Jupiter seem to be having fun with all of this. Local reporter Olivia Hitchcock shared multiple pictures of people posting for smiling selfies in front of the store.

But beyond Florida busybodies and national-media-courting cops, it's unclear that anyone else has benefited from all of this.

Law enforcement has yet to back up the serious claims their massive operation was premised on. They've also backed down from some of the more shocking assertions offered at the start—even as more media have run with the sex-slavery ring narrative. Whatever comes, it's clear this story has already developed meme-like proportions that obscure the reality of the situation. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere between dens of captive sex slaves and totally empowered and free workers, but we'll never get there by treating this as a movie-style rescue fantasy.

https://reason.com/blog/2019/02/25/florida-massage-parlor-sex-stings

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We know that cops lie, nothing new or interesting there.  But it is odd and troubling to me that these bush league busts pretty consistently get reported as huge blows against human trafficking.

It could be to keep federal money flowing (look, Uncle Sugar, we're busting grimy pimps/traffickers, moar money for MRAPs and Stingers pls), or so we can make a good showing for our counterparties in treaties and agreements with other countries that address trafficking.

Something, though, is going on.

And it's kind of reminiscent of how the gubmint wages the drug war mostly against low-level dealers and addicts and gets a big fish once every decade or so.

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We know that cops lie, nothing new or interesting there.  But it is odd and troubling to me that these bush league busts pretty consistently get reported as huge blows against human trafficking.
It could be to keep federal money flowing (look, Uncle Sugar, we're busting grimy pimps/traffickers, moar money for MRAPs and Stingers pls), or so we can make a good showing for our counterparties in treaties and agreements with other countries that address trafficking.
Something, though, is going on.
And it's kind of reminiscent of how the gubmint wages the drug war mostly against low-level dealers and addicts and gets a big fish once every decade or so.

Much truth here.
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Still wondering. 

The very famous, very rich, owner of a highly successful NFL team that has become universally hated outside of its own fan base got caught paying for a cheap rub n tug at a shady Asian massage parlor. That’s newsworthy if nothing else for the lulz.

 

My friends brother was caught by his wife getting run n tugs in very similar circumstances and we laugh at it all the time. He’s lucky it was his wife and not the cops. He’s a nobody and it’s newsworthy among those of us who know him. This guy is famous therefore newsworthy.

 

His charge doesn’t change whether it’s “trafficking” or not. He’s charged with being a John, not a trafficker. The police were investigating “trafficking” so the headlines were all accurate. Whether the “trafficking” charges holds among those defendants makes no difference to Kraft because he solicited and that’s all he’s charged with.

 

You guys are way off track here. The owner of the New England Patriots got a $50, 8 minute handy from a shady rub n tug joint the morning of the AFC Championship game. He apparently is a regular. That’s fucking hilarious! Schadenfreude to the max!

 

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32 minutes ago, 'stache said:

The very famous, very rich, owner of a highly successful NFL team that has become universally hated outside of its own fan base got caught paying for a cheap rub n tug at a shady Asian massage parlor. That’s newsworthy if nothing else for the lulz.

 

My friends brother was caught by his wife getting run n tugs in very similar circumstances and we laugh at it all the time. He’s lucky it was his wife and not the cops. He’s a nobody and it’s newsworthy among those of us who know him. This guy is famous therefore newsworthy.

 

His charge doesn’t change whether it’s “trafficking” or not. He’s charged with being a John, not a trafficker. The police were investigating “trafficking” so the headlines were all accurate. Whether the “trafficking” charges holds among those defendants makes no difference to Kraft because he solicited and that’s all he’s charged with.

 

You guys are way off track here. The owner of the New England Patriots got a $50, 8 minute handy from a shady rub n tug joint the morning of the AFC Championship game. He apparently is a regular. That’s fucking hilarious! Schadenfreude to the max!

 

This guy gets it. 

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23 hours ago, woohorn said:

Back the Blue (balls)?

"First, an undercover Homeland Security agent received massages and asked about add-on sexual services. A police report said that the agent kissed and had his penis touched by the worker but left before anything else could happen."

JerseyMan?

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One thing always surprises me about these stories, and a few people have touched on what it may be, but all the women that get arrested seem to be rather elderly. Are these the tuggers or the mamasans? Because if I went to one of these places, and those were the tuggers, I certainly wouldn’t think they were sex slaves. I realize the foundation for how they keep the women enslaved doesn’t really change due to their age, and a 60 year old woman could remain coerced in many of the same ways as a 15 year old, but it seems less likely. And if they are “slaves”, charging them with prostitution seems counterintuitive. I don’t know if I’m making my point clearly, but something about the whole thing just seems off.

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Maybe to elaborate by example, around Mother’s Day or something a few years ago, I realized I hadn’t gotten the wife anything so I started looking around the area to get her a massage. Google told me there was a massage parlor at Manchaca and Slaughter. I open their page, and there were pictures of two attractive Asian women, probably in their early twenties. THAT is what I assume to be possible trafficking, not a bunch of lazy-eyed (seriously, there’s always at least one with a lazy eye) women my grandma’s age. 

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The police get to have a little fun and damage numerous lives at the same time. I guess it distracts them from shooting black people, so there's a positive.

I was wondering if another shoe would drop, but it seems the first shoe was just a sock. 

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On 3/1/2019 at 10:17 AM, Hook1997 said:

Wait where’s the crowd that was saying he was a part of sex trafficking just cause he did this the other day when I called bullshit??? lol  

Probably some ambitious politician looking for publicity to make a move for higher office.  It's the same thing that usually leads to prosecutorial abuses like withholding evidence from the defense to get conviction rates up.  Unlike the run of the mill defendant, Kraft has the resources to make this blow up in the face of the prosecution.

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1 hour ago, sushihorn said:

Probably some ambitious politician looking for publicity to make a move for higher office.  It's the same thing that usually leads to prosecutorial abuses like withholding evidence from the defense to get conviction rates up.  Unlike the run of the mill defendant, Kraft has the resources to make this blow up in the face of the prosecution.

They might have been excited at first, but I agree, having a defendant like Kraft among the accused could prove unwelcome when all is said and done

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25 minutes ago, Augustus said:

They might have been excited at first, but I agree, having a defendant like Kraft among the accused could prove unwelcome when all is said and done

Don't they have him dead to rights for paying for a handy? Again, his charge is solicitation not trafficking.

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