![]() The question that the wealthy residents of Palm Beach were asking themselves was, plainly, why? Why would a man worth $6.6 billion risk getting a $59 hand job at a strip mall massage parlor? Hearings on the sex charges were ongoing Kraft, who had pleaded not guilty, was vigorously fighting them in court. ![]() Many of the island’s residents were packing up prior to hurricane season covered trailers lined driveways, waiting to transport art back to Aspen or Connecticut or Long Island. If you are the 1 percent, you can opt out of most things in this world, including the weather. W hen I arrived in Palm Beach last spring, the weather report was threatening rain. “Modern-day slavery” can “happen anywhere, including in the peaceful community of Jupiter, Florida.” “Human trafficking is evil in our midst,” Aronberg told reporters. Three days later, on February 22, Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg announced that Kraft would be charged with two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution. “Many of those men are in ongoing relationships.” “Many of the men are married,” the sheriff said, adopting the moralizing tone common to faith-based groups that consider the sex industry an affront to Christian values. Snyder announced that as many as 300 men who went to the spas for sex would be charged with soliciting prostitution. Some were unable to leave, the sheriff said, because the traffickers confiscated their money and passports. The traffickers, Snyder continued, had covered their tracks by moving the women every 10 to 20 days to different spas, where they were forced to sleep on massage tables and cook on hot plates. Sex trafficking, under law, involves recruiting and transporting women by force or fraud, and coercing them to work as prostitutes. “I don’t believe they were told they were going to work in massage parlors seven days a week, having unprotected sex with up to 1,000 men a year,” Snyder said. Many of the women, he said, had been tricked into coming to the United States and had been working to pay off debts to traffickers before being rescued. Local officers, he announced, working alongside Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security, had busted a $20 million sex trafficking ring with tentacular reach to New York and China. O n February 19, after staging dramatic raids on nearly a dozen massage parlors in South Florida, Sheriff William Snyder held a press conference. ![]() The friend excoriated Kraft for getting a “rub and tug.” Kraft, seemingly hurt, insisted that it “wasn’t like that.” He said he had felt a real connection with Lulu and Mingbi. Kraft explained how he had gone for what he thought was a regular massage, but that the masseuse had given him a hand job instead. “You won’t believe what happened to me,” his friend recalls him bragging. Kimbark, having accomplished his mission, let Kraft and Bernon go with a warning. Kraft asked the officer if he was a Miami Dolphins fan and showed him his Super Bowl ring, explaining that he was the owner of the Patriots. Then she and Lulu helped him get dressed.Īs Kraft left the spa in the white Bentley, Officer Scott Kimbark, nicknamed Bark, stopped the car for a minor traffic violation. After Kraft ejaculated, Mingbi wiped his penis with a white towel. Last January, he requested what is colloquially known as a sneak-and-peek search warrant.Īt Orchids, according to the Jupiter police, Kraft paid cash to the spa’s co-owner, Lei Wang, who goes by Lulu, and received a hand job from her and another worker, later identified as Shen Mingbi. Herzog’s report gave Sharp sufficient cause to search the spa’s trash, and on November 14 and 19, his team found semen among the refuse. Herzog noted an “excessive amount of food in the refrigerator.” She also noted bedding, clothing, and a flatiron. “As the inspection progressed, I began to feel more and more uneasy,” she recalled. Herzog later testified that the spa workers appeared agitated by her visit and failed to make eye contact. Sharp asked Herzog if she could survey the parlor, and on November 14, she complied. “At that point I understood this was not just a regular massage parlor but one that was an illicit massage business,” Sharp later testified. One day, a group of eight men who arrived in a golf cart made touchdown gestures before entering, their arms flung up to indicate that they were about to score. Almost everyone they saw enter was a man. For seven days in early November 2018, Sharp and his team staked out the spa.
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