PORTLAND, Ore.— A federal grand jury in Oregon has returned two indictments charging six people with running sex trafficking organizations operating in the U.S., Canada and Australia.
As part of a takedown operation, the FBI seized the primary website used by one of the organizations, SupermatchEscort.com, and about 500 other associated domains, including 25 location-specific subsites.
Industry attorney Lawrence Walters told XBIZ that the indictments, unsealed today, do not point to FOSTA/SESTA as the underlying reason for the takedown operation.
“The Department of Justice appears committed to pursuing those who use websites for purposes of engaging in prostitution,” Walters said. “Notably, this prosecution does not rely on FOSTA/SESTA as a basis for the indictment.
“The mass seizure of domain names prior to a finding of guilt generates some issues from a First Amendment standpoint,” he said. “However, this practice has become more common, and is likely to continue unless the courts intervene.
“If the government seized a newspaper’s printing press based on alleged illegal ads in the newspaper, the free speech concern would be more obvious."
The FBI partnered with local law enforcement agencies in more than a dozen cities across the nation to coordinate sting operations targeting the organizations operated by defendants under indictment in Oregon, along with other Asian sex trafficking networks.
Zongtao Chen, aka Mark Chen, of Toronto; Weixuan Zhou, aka Marco Zhou, of Guangzhou, China; Yan Wang, aka Sarah Wang, of Temecula, Calif.; Chaodan Wang, of Beaverton, Ore.; and Ting Fu, of Beaverton are charged with conspiracy and use of interstate facilities to promote, manage, establish, carry on or facilitate a racketeering enterprise.
In a separate indictment, Hui Ling Sun, of Portland, is charged with using interstate facilities to promote, manage, establish, carry on or facilitate a racketeering enterprise.
The organization employed dispatchers who would receive incoming requests from potential customers to set up “dates.” The dispatchers would coordinate and schedule the dates with women working at various brothels.
Dispatchers used a computer program to schedule and track all of the prostitution dates, the Justice Department said.
The computer program had a customer database that logged more than 30,000 customer phone numbers with details from previous dates.