色多多

Employees had noticed a steady stream of men entering and leaving a nearby Asian massage parlor. Something didn鈥檛 feel right. Employees at the driving school suspected human trafficking.

Waco city police had dismissed their concerns, so they turned to the county sheriff instead.

When Detective Joseph Scaramucci, of the McLennan County Sheriff鈥檚 Office, first received the complaint, he wasn鈥檛 sure how to respond.

But that call would set in聽motion the gathering of evidence of just how violent life in an illicit massage parlor can be. Scaramucci became one of the few outsiders to get a detailed look at daily life inside these establishments.

He would also use an approach that experts now consider a model for tackling the exploitation of immigrant women trapped in the human trafficking trade.

The issue is pervasive. Across the country, Asian massage parlors masquerade as legitimate businesses while illegally offering sexual services to male clients.

To some, it may seem like a victimless crime. But the women inside these parlors are often among society鈥檚 most vulnerable 鈥� isolated by language barriers, burdened by crushing debts, and left with few options for survival.

The driving school had tried to shut down the parlor by taking down license plate numbers, using its unique access to look up the owners and sending letters to their homes, letting them know that they may be supporting human traffickers. When that didn鈥檛 work, they turned to the police.

Scaramucci said no聽one in his office knew what to do at first. Police eventually decided to put the massage parlor under surveillance.

鈥淲e were stopping cars, talking to the guys. Really, nobody would tell us anything,鈥� Scaramucci said. 鈥淚 think we had one guy that was like, 鈥榊eah, I got a hand job in there.鈥欌��

Surveillance alone wasn鈥檛聽going to work. It seemed the only option to get the needed evidence was to go undercover.

Scaramucci himself went into the business and asked for a $60 massage. He was using his cell phone as a hidden wire, with other detectives in unmarked vehicles listening from the parking lot. He said the woman offered a happy ending, but he declined, which seemed to puzzle her.

Happy endings cost another $40 in tips.

Armed with evidence, detectives obtained a court order to review the business鈥檚 utility bills. They discovered who the owner of Le Barre Massage was and that he had a second business, Asian Coast Massage, within a mile. Detectives went undercover there, too, in early 2016.

A key decision was not to arrest the women being trafficked, Scaramucci said.

鈥淥ur only kind of sustaining rule was that the women didn鈥檛 go to jail for prostitution,鈥� he said.

Those mug shots would聽likely be broadcast to family back home on the Chinese app WeChat, shaming the women and making their cooperation all the more unlikely. What鈥檚 more, the owners can easily find replacements.

鈥淵ou could arrest them聽every day, a different one every day, and it鈥檚 never going to stop the business,鈥� Scaramucci said. 鈥淪o why are we doing that? And there鈥檚 no answer for it."

So Scaramucci instead arrested the owner, whose name was on the utility bills. The owner, Jacob Yang, later pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution and was sentenced to 100 days in jail and 10 years' probation.

Scaramucci went from not knowing much about illicit massage parlors to looking at sites online and realizing there were many of them. Nationwide, there are an estimated 16,800 of them, according to The Network, a nonprofit that focuses on the issue.

Scaramucci took the list off one site called Backpage and started going down it to do time-consuming undercover operations, one after another.

What Scaramucci would soon discover would cement his resolve that these women are victims, not criminals.

He did another undercover operation at two more massage parlors. When he arrived at the business with a search warrant, Scaramucci remained at the center of the property while his partners searched. One soon came back with an alarm clock that seemed suspicious.

鈥淗e said, 鈥楬ey, man, I think this is a camera.鈥� And I said, 鈥榃hat the (expletive) would make you think that's a camera. And he goes, 鈥楾here's an SD card in the back.鈥欌��

Scaramucci took it back to the station and put it in a computer. The alarm clock was a hidden camera that the owner had set up to monitor the women. The card contained video files. There was another one at the other location.

The cameras had captured 90 days of activity within the massage parlors.

Soon, Scaramucci would become one of the few outsiders who witnessed what happened in these businesses, scenes that he said turned his stomach.

"What was very, very shocking to me was actually the amount of forcible rape that occurred, where men were chasing the women around the room, flipping them over the beds, pinning them down and actually forcibly raping them,鈥� Scaramucci said. 鈥淭hat was a huge shock to me. I did not expect to see that."鈥�

Scaramucci recalls watching at least five rapes. And that was in 90 days with two parlors that only employed about five women. One video clip in particular remains seared into Scaramucci鈥檚 memory. An obese man on a bed kept grabbing the massage therapist and pulling her to him.

鈥淭he whole time he was smirking and smiling. And you could tell by the way they were moving, she was trying to pull away and push back. 鈥� He was manhandling her,鈥� Scaramucci recalls.

The sheriff鈥檚 office was able to identify three of the men suspected of rape. But Scaramucci says the prosecutor couldn鈥檛 file charges because the women couldn鈥檛 testify against the men. They had left long ago.

Scaramucci said more than 400 customers were on the tapes. All but a couple of them are on the video engaging in sex. One of the men worked in the sheriff鈥檚 office. That deputy was fired.

Scaramucci also witnessed the daily lives of these women.

鈥淭hey never left,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey slept on the beds that all this was going on. You would see them doing these things all day long. Then, pull out a blanket, lay it down, pull out another blanket, get underneath that one on the same bed, scroll their phone, and then go to sleep. Wake up, rinse, wash, repeat. There was never any time out. You've got no life."鈥�

Most of the women turned over all the fees and half their tips to the owners, Scaramucci said. He remembers one owner charging $300 for rent and $100 for groceries, leaving these women with little cash.

Prosecutors filed charges against the female owner of those two massage parlors.

Scaramucci says human trafficking is very difficult to charge because you have to have a victim testify that the owners coerced them. And the women in these illicit parlors are afraid to do that, he said.

鈥淲hen it comes to human trafficking cases, there just aren't any involving massage parlors, maybe a few, but I'm not able to find them,鈥� said Scaramucci.

So, the prosecutor instead would charge the owners with the promotion of prostitution, which was a felony. In 2019, state lawmakers increased the possible sentence to five to 99 years as a way to combat human trafficking.

鈥淪o it's smarter for me to just take the aggravated promotion of prostitution charge,鈥� which didn鈥檛 require the women鈥檚 cooperation, Scaramucci said.

Many women working in these massage parlors came from Flushing, New York, or Los Angeles, hubs for Chinese immigrants, he said.

Upon arrival, many sex trafficking victims are in debt and cannot speak English fluently. So, they are funneled into a network of massage parlors.

It鈥檚 a form of organized crime, Scaramucci says, and so the sheriff鈥檚 office started to treat the cases as organized crime investigations.

Prosecutors would ultimately file charges for racketeering and money laundering, complex charges that require expertise from law enforcement.

Scaramucci estimates he worked on 10 investigations starting in 2016. But he鈥檚 done far more investigations of human trafficking. On LinkedIn, he says those investigations resulted in arrests of more than 680 sex buyers and 163 people for human trafficking and related offenses. This involved 285 sex trafficking victims.

He left the sheriff鈥檚 office in 2023 and now works for a nonprofit focused on sex trafficking. Because of his persistence, he says Waco is now free of illicit massage parlors.