Area Police Try to Combat a Proliferation of Brothels

A recent Montgomery case involving an alleged family-run prostitution ring wound up in federal court late last year and is expected to go to trial next month. Elsy Aparicio, 43, her mother, two siblings and three unrelated men were charged in November with conspiring to transport illegal immigrants across state lines with the intention of having them work in brothels.

On Nov. 15, two days before the indictment was unsealed, Montgomery police happened upon an armed robbery at a Wheaton brothel while looking for a carjacking suspect. Police said they found four members of the violent Central American gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. Two of the men were charged with raping the prostitute after robbing the other men in the brothel at gunpoint, police said. Stack and Wiley said that the brothels are robbed and extorted routinely but that most of those crimes probably go unreported.

"Of course they're not going to call the police," Stack said. "It's not like you're extorting a bakery."

The crime that shrouds the brothels has also hampered nonprofit organizations that reach out to trafficking victims.

"There's only now beginning to be more law enforcement activity in the Latino networks," said Derek Ellerman, co-executive director of the Polaris Project, a Washington organization that helps trafficking victims. "Our ability to do outreach in those networks is very limited because of the violence."

In 2001, police said, Korean-operated brothels that operated under the guise of massage parlors were the scourge of vice detectives in Montgomery and other Washington area jurisdictions. Montgomery closed most of them by enacting codes barring people who were not licensed as masseuses by the state or county and by authorizing local authorities to inspect them at will to enforce occupancy regulations that prohibit people from living in businesses. Other jurisdictions copied the county's strategy.

Montgomery detectives say they have been able to close all the Korean-run brothels that operated out of commercial locations in the county. Other Maryland counties, including Charles, have gone after them by enforcing health department codes.

Some Korean-run brothels that operate as massage parlors continue to operate in the District and some Virginia counties, according to Web sites where patrons exchange tips and information about them.

The cantinas' method of operation makes them more difficult to shut down, police said.

Most have doormen who communicate with security guards outside using two-way radios. Owners advertise by word of mouth and by handing out fake business cards that promote sales of such innocuous items as cowboy boots or tamales.

According to police, doormen give clients a poker chip, a playing card or a glass bead, which the clients give to the prostitutes to prove they have paid. The women, many of whom are based in New York and New Jersey, spend week-long stints at the brothels. At the end of the week, they turn over the chips, cards or beads in exchange for a share of the profit -- usually $15 per client.

The women tend to be 17 to 35 years old. When their week at a brothel is up, they are either driven back on Sundays to the New York area or to another establishment. In the Aparicio case, the network used vans to transport the women, court documents show. Others take Greyhound buses, detectives said.