Comments (0) | |

Sunday, Oct. 05, 2008

Uncovering massage parlor ownership no easy task

In the months since law enforcement raided 11 Macon area massage parlors this summer, five of them appear to have closed.

The lights are off and telephones are disconnected. In one case, a building is for rent again. In another, neighbors say they haven't seen the manager since he showed up to take down the security cameras that used to monitor the outside of the building.

Police have said their investigation of Macon's late-night massage and spa industry continues, although it appears to have geared down as police focus on a recent barrage of shootings.

So far, most of the charges filed in the parlor investigations - all of which are pending - have been filed against low-level employees instead of the owners. Though police have been trained to recognize the signs of sex slavery and human trafficking, which some officials say is often part and parcel of massage parlor prostitution, there haven't been any legal charges that trafficking has happened in Macon.

But even as the investigation dragged Macon's massage parlors to the forefront of public debate this summer, the question remained: Who owns these places, and where did they come from?

The answers varied. Several of the parlors are owned or run by Asians, a couple of whom don't seem to be in the country. One is owned by a woman from Lizella. Another parlor, now closed, was owned by a man from Ideal whose own mother says she doesn't know where he is.

In some cases, employees at the businesses said they'd never heard of the person whose name is listed on the business license. In several cases, there was no record of the spa filed with the Georgia Secretary of State's Office. Connections to other massage parlors in the state or even to other businesses of any type were difficult to establish.

In a brief interview several weeks ago, Macon police Lt. Kelly Monroe, who is heading the spa investigations, said that's consistent with his findings.He did not return messages seeking comment for this article last week, and the department did not provide responses to Telegraph questions.

But that doesn't mean connections don't exist. Tokyo Health Spa, for example, received a business license in 2006 to operate in Macon. But the spa's parent company, Tokyo Spa Inc., has been in existence since November 2001, when it was first incorporated with a Columbus address.

"Many of the massage parlors are connected with each other, especially the Asian ones," said state Sen. Chip Rogers, who helped author Georgia's human trafficking law. "(They're) often linked to other places, so they move people around from one place to another."

But that's hard to prove, Rogers said, and often takes years by law enforcement.

People who've done business with the parlors said vague ownership was the norm.

"It's kind of an odd group to figure out, to be quite honest with you," said Chris Story, whose billboard company, Lamar Advertising, has had advertising contracts with local massage parlors.

Those contracts are all winding down or complete and won't be renewed, Story said.

"Throughout the whole process, you never really met the real owner," Story said. "You go try to find that manager, if they were behind on payments, they don't know who you're talking about."

ULTIMATE SPA

License holder: Muoi Thi Huynh Wheless, 3355 Pio Nono Ave.

Muoi Thi Huynh Wheless plans to close her spa and move back to Vietnam.

She won't say it's because police raids have basically shut down her business, but the place doesn't seem to have many customers lately. Wheless said she'll definitely close soon, "maybe in the next couple months."

Wheless said she lives in Macon and has for the last five years or so. But her arrest report listed Fayetteville, N.C., as a home address.

She said she has a son who lives with her sister, but she wouldn't say where.

Wheless, 65, said she's too old to get work anywhere, so she opened Ultimate Spa, a small parlor on the end of a Pio Nono shopping center. The spa is open seven days a week, from 9 a.m. to midnight.

Inside, behind the window where customers used to inquire about prices, there's a futon and what appears to be a small bed, a potential calling card of human trafficking that authorities say they're looking for in these parlors.

But Wheless said no one lives at the spa. What appears to be a bed is a massage table made up with sheets and a pillow. A small television set can be seen from the table.

"Nobody sleeps here," Wheless said. "I lay down here."

Q SPA / RBB & SK

ENTERPRISES INC.

License holder: Dwight Lloyd Green, 4325 Log Cabin Drive

The Telegraph didn't find a business license for Q Spa, but RBB & SK Enterprise Inc. holds a personal services business license for the same address as the spa: 4325 Log Cabin Drive.

That license is held by Dwight Lloyd Green, who is listed as the corporation's CEO as well as the co-incorporator with Kwan Young Lee of Alpharetta. Various attempts to locate Green and Lee were not successful, including calls to telephone numbers connected to the Atlanta-area addresses that appear on various company documents.

The spa appears to be closed. Employees at a car stereo shop next door said they've never heard of Green, but they have met Lee, who they said is South Korean. He was charged with impersonating an officer when police raided the spa in July.

The employees, who wouldn't give their names, said Lee showed up a few weeks ago and removed the security cameras from outside the building, and they haven't seen him since.

The company itself, RBB & SK Enterprises, was created in December 2007, according to documents from the Georgia Secretary of State's Office. The business license for the Log Cabin Drive address was issued several months later, in March.

Monroe, who is spearheading the police department's investigation of the parlors, said he didn't know the whereabouts of the spa's owner.

"We're still working on that location," Monroe said. "That means it's still under investigation."

ALL AMERICAN SPA

License holder: Valerie Simmons, 3892 Bloomfield Village Drive

Simmons lists a Lizella address on her business license, but her booking record at the Bibb County jail lists a Chamblee address as her home.

Simmons is married and also goes by the name Valerie Simmons Milner, according to her attorney in Atlanta, Alan

Begner. Begner also said that Simmons lives in the Macon area, not in Chamblee.

Simmons spoke briefly to The Telegraph. But she referred any substantive questions to her attorney, who answered a few questions and said his client didn't want to be interviewed. He said Simmons previously owned spas in the Atlanta area and has never before been charged with crimes related to prostitution.

Her spa in Macon, in a shopping center off Mercer University Drive, remains open. In fact, the spa has bought a new billboard along Interstate 75 since the investigation began.

An internal affairs complaint was filed against the Macon Police Department in the wake of one of the raids at All American Spa, and Begner said in at least one of the arrests there, officers acknowledged that there was no deal for sex for money, but they made the arrest anyway.

"I've seen this in other counties and cities, to be sure," Begner said. "(It's) an attempt to put her out of business.

"Her business does not violate the law, or seeks not to, let's say," he said.
The Macon Police Department did not provide an update on the internal affairs complaint or respond to Begner's charge that the investigation was meant to put spas out of business.

All American Spa is not a massage parlor, an employee who answered the telephone there recently was quick to note. It's a spa, offering body shampoos and body scrubs. Its business license was issued in January 2008, according to county records.

VIP SPA & RELAXATION

License holder: Thuy Lawler, 3266 Pio Nono Ave.

Mai Trinh, an employee at the spa, told The Telegraph that Lawler is on vacation in Vietnam and won't return for a couple of months.

Trinh said Lawler is the spa's owner. City records show that the spa's business license was issued to Lawler in January 2005.

Trinh said she didn't know much about the business, and that she was a relatively new employee who wasn't at work when police raided the establishment in June and July. But business has been adversely affected by the raids and the publicity, she said.

PARADISE HEALTH SPA & HOT TOWEL WRAP

License holder: Bui Thi Le, 1032 Gray Highway

An employee at Paradise Spa told The Telegraph that the spa's owner is in Vietnam, but the employee would not give her name.

She also said that Bui Thi Le is not the spa's owner, but she wouldn't give the owner's name. Neighbors in the trophy shop next door to the spa said they didn't know who owns the spa, which is in a strip mall on Gray Highway.

A security camera is trained on the front door, which remains locked during the day. You have to be buzzed in to enter.

City documents lists Bui Thi Le as the business license holder and state that the license was issued in August 2005.

ROSE SPA

License holder: Milton Fowler, 4221 Mercer University Drive

Milton Fowler is from Ideal, where his family has been for generations, said his mother, Frida Fowler.

But Frida Fowler, 85, said she doesn't know where her son is now. He left the country and "I was told I don't expect him back," she told The Telegraph in a recent telephone interview.

"(He said), 'somewhere between the North and South Pole,' " she said.

Fowler's son has been gone about a year. But someone paid the fee on Rose Spa's business license in April, according to city records. It's not clear who that was, and Frida Fowler said she didn't even know he owned a spa. The spa is closed now, and any signs that were there have been taken down. The space is for rent.

David Pope, the Macon attorney who filed the original incorporation papers for Rose Spa LLC, said he doesn't know of any partners in the spa. He also said he knows very little about the business, didn't know Fowler and hasn't talked to him since helping with the paperwork.

"I had no suspicion one way or another," Pope said. "Simply someone coming in, wanting to form an entity."

Milton has always been the traveling type, his mother said. He moved to San Francisco when he was 19, she said. Recently, a lawyer named Smith called the house looking for Milton, his mother said. During one of their occasional phone calls, Fowler said, she told her son about the attorney and he told her "don't worry about it."

"Milton was a kind of person that kept his stuff to himself, ... as far as his mama was concerned," she said.

FOUR SEASONS SAUNA / KGN ENTERPRISES INC.

License holder: Mi Ok Shiroma, 3975 Arkwright Road

Four Seasons Sauna's business makeup has been the most complicated of all the entities examined by The Telegraph. It's also the only one with apparent ties to another spa.

The business license is in Mi Ok Shiroma's name, but Shiroma isn't listed in the corporation papers available online for KGN Enterprises Inc., the sauna's parent company, according to the license.

KGN papers don't list a CEO or any other company officers, just Houston County attorney Pruett W. Burge as the registered agent, who handled the legal paperwork to create the business, and Kyong Nam Woo as an incorporator when the company was created in March 2000.

Burge said the name Shiroma was not familiar to him, but that Woo also was associated with Peach Spa, the Centerville parlor that opened in June 2001 and was targeted by an undercover police sting the next month.

Richard Chon, of Gainesville, was named as the owner or manager of Peach Spa and charged with operating a place of prostitution as a result of the investigation.

Burge said Woo introduced him to Chon and that it seemed like Woo initially was "the money person" behind one or both of the spas.

Burge said Woo was identified to him as a Buddhist priest in Atlanta when they met.

He said he had a gut feeling about the Four Seasons Sauna, so much so that he "prepared some employee instructions to be followed that clearly were not followed."

In 2003 the Four Seasons Sauna in Macon was sold to Jae Duk Shim, according to Burge's records.

"It's a very loose organization, I'll tell you that," Burge said. "It's hard to figure out who does what."

Repeated attempts to reach an owner of Four Seasons Sauna by calling and visiting the location were not successful. Two employees at the sauna seemed to indicate that Shiroma was the owner and in New York. Employees also said Shiroma was not reachable by telephone.

A recording on the sauna's telephone line promises body shampoos and massages for $40 a half-hour and $60 for an hour.

The business is open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 1 a.m., according to the recorded message.

"We have a young, all-Oriental staff," the telephone recording at the sauna states. "Please come by and visit our friendly staff."

TOKYO HEALTH SPA

License holder: Sung Yong Chun, 2790 Riverside Drive

Sung Yong Chun holds the business license for Tokyo Health Spa. A spa employee identified him as the business's owner, saying he only comes to the location once every week or two.

Chun hasn't returned messages left at the spa, and other attempts to locate him have been unsuccessful. He holds the license but doesn't appear in Secretary of State's Office records for the spa's parent company, Tokyo Spa Inc.

That company's CEO is Myong S. Trudell, and the company secretary is Chin S. Aylward.

Aylward is connected to a Columbus church called the Hallelujah Korean Presbyterian Church. He is secretary and chief financial officer for the church, according to state records, and owns a home in Columbus, according to Columbus property tax records.

Trudell is not listed as part of the church's leadership but owns a home and a condominium in Columbus, according to tax records.

Repeated telephone messages left at the church's listed number were not returned, and attempts to reach Chun, Trudell and Aylward, as well as another church official and the Columbus attorney who helped create corporations associated with the church and spa, have not been successful.

According to Tokyo Health Spa's business license, the spa has been in business since March 2006.

The parent company was created in November 2001.

The church was incorporated in 1998.

Tokyo Health Spa, located on Riverside Drive, remains open. Its listed hours are from 9 a.m. to 3 a.m. Mondays through Saturdays and from 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. Sundays.

THAILAND SPA

License holder: Jacklyn Truong, 4378 Pio Nono Ave.

Attempts to reach anyone associated with this spa were unsuccessful.

The spa is now closed. Plywood covers the windows from the inside, but it's not clear if the boards were put in place after the business closed or if they were used to keep people from seeing inside. A security camera remains trained on the front door.

A neighbor said the business has been closed since police raided it in June. A business license for the facility was issued to Jacklyn Truong in July 2007.

SOFT HANDS MASSAGE & SPA

License holder: Hyeon Joo Chae, 1922 Riverside Drive

Soft Hands Massage & Spa on Riverside Drive appears to be shut down.

Theneon sign that says "ring the door bell we love you" is no longer lighted, and the telephone number has been disconnected. A recording of someone speaking an Asian language can be heard through the door.

Soft Hands is one of the few parlors police raided in Macon that involved the owner or manager being charged.

Police said an employee there told investigators that she paid $60 a day in room and board.

That was a potential red flag for police, since exorbitant rent charges are one of the signs of forced prostitution and human trafficking, authorities have said.

Hyeon Joo Chae holds the business license for the spa and was charged with keeping a house of prostitution, but no human trafficking charges have been filed.

Information given to booking officers at the jail says Chae is a Korean woman who lives in Atlanta. Her home address corresponds to an upscale condominium in the Buckhead community there.

Chae's charges are pending in state court, and she has hired local attorney Floyd Buford. Buford wouldn't answer any questions about Chae.

He agreed to pass an interview request to her but told The Telegraph not to expect a response.

Someone was growing a small garden behind the spa. Hot peppers and eggplants were on the vines last month.

PALM TREE SPA

License holder: Mi K Ramey, 3096 Riverside Drive

Palm Tree Spa, located in a shopping center near the corner of Riverside Drive and Northside Drive, appears to be closed.

The Telegraph has been unable to locate Mi K Ramey - who was issued a business license for the location in October 2007 - or establish any connections between Palm Tree Spa and other owners or businesses.

To contact writer Travis Fain, call 744-4213.