Labor Trafficking of Chinese to the U.S. and Other countries

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/07/12/taiwan-arrests-more-than-40-people-in-human-trafficking-ring-that-sent-migrants-to-canada-australia/

Taiwan arrests more than 40 people in human trafficking ring that sent migrants to Canada, Australia

The Canadian Press  Jul 12, 2012 – 9:48 AM ET

Andy Clark / Reuters files

A family is escorted off the MV Sun Sea after they and an estimated 490 suspected Tamil refugees arrived on a cargo ship at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt in Colwood, British Columbia on Vancouver Island in 2010. Authorities intercepted and boarded the ship after it entered Canadian waters after sailing from Sri Lanka. 

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Officials in Taiwan have arrested more than 40 people in a human trafficking ring that may have sent hundreds of Chinese nationals into Canada and Australia.
A report on the Taipei Times newspaper website says the lucrative operation was allegedly run by Chinese national Wang Cheng-wei, who was arrested in February.
Since Wang’s arrest, Taiwan’s National Immigration Agency reportedly cracked multiple cases of human smuggling by working with authorities in Canada and Australia.

According to Taiwan’s National Immigration Agency, the smugglers would buy Chinese passports for people from Fujian Province and add their photos to the documents.
The report says the smugglers conducted more than 50 successful operations, smuggling one to four Chinese per trip.
Canada has launched an ambitious international effort to prevent smugglers from reaching its shores.
In 2009, the MV Ocean Lady brought 76 Tamil migrants to British Columbia, and the MV Sun Sea brought 492 a year later.
The Harper government has offered financial assistance to help foreign countries like Thailand to crack down on human smuggling rings.
The government has also introduced a tough new immigration bill that targets the gangs.

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Most labor trafficking victims you will see in the restaurants in the U.S. are Fujanese. Though the report says that the Fujanese are smuggled into Canada and the Australia, based on the past cases, traffickers and smugglers often use Canada's weak immigration regulation to smuggle and traffic the victims into the U.S.

Fujanese are subject to migrant smuggling and trafficking in developing countries in Europe, North America, and Australia. Fujanese are historically and culturally discriminated within the Chinese providence among many ethnic groups in China.


Traffickers and smugglers use countries with weak immigration legislation to transport victims and migrant workers to the U.S.


More information on Fujuanese
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CFoQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdigitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1006%26context%3Dforcedlabor&ei=neP-T8irIoSC2wWOiP3YBA&usg=AFQjCNFVshutqTvBQZY44IKSJmj4bK-ftw&sig2=MsPPvJy_Hr3Fd5lYwktWWw

TEXAS: Authorities charge two people in connection with human trafficking at massage parlors

http://www.statesman.com/news/williamson/authorities-charge-two-people-in-connection-with-human-2414188.html

ROUND ROCK — Authorities said Monday that they have arrested an Elgin man and woman who are accused of forcing five Asian women into prostitution at two massage parlors Panda Paws in Cedar Park and Unique Massage in Round Rock.
Xiaofeng Wo, 47, and Greg Sanfratello, 46, were both charged with continuous trafficking of persons, a first degree felony according to the Cedar Park Police Department. Wo was also charged with aggravated promotion of prostitution.
The women who worked at the massage parlors were forced to live there or were shuttled to an apartment Wo had leased in the 300 block of Cypress Creek Road in Cedar Park, a warrant said. The apartment had no furniture, and the women slept on sheets on the floor, the warrant said.
The warrant shows that Wo is a Chinese citizen, but Capt. Jeff Hayes, a spokesman for the Cedar Park Police Department, said the immigration status of the five women was uncertain.
Wo and Sanfratello, who lived at the same Elgin address, were arrested last week and being held Monday in the Williamson County Jail, according to an arrest warrant. Wo's bail was set at $515,000 for the two charges. Sanfratello's bail was set at $500,000.
Wo owned the massage parlors, located in the 900 block of S. Bell Blvd. in Cedar Park and the 2000 block of Interstate 35 in Round Rock, a warrant said.
Police seized $15,964 in cash, a 2004 Mazda 6 and a 2011 Honda Accord, according to court documents.
The Cedar Park Police Department and the Round Rock Police Department began their investigation in June after a man submitted an anonymous complaint saying that he had gone into Unique Massage on April 11 to receive a foot massage and was asked whether he wanted a "happy ending," the warrant said.
The warrant said that "a ‘happy ending' is common terminology used in the sex industry."
An investigator also read postings about sexual services the two massage parlors offered on a website.
Police sent an undercover officer into Panda Paws on June 21 and another into Unique Massage on June 22 and both were touched in an inappropriate way, according to the warrant.
The women who worked at the massage parlors were taken to a "safe and secure location where they are receiving appropriate follow-up assistance," police said. 

Contact Claire Osborn at 
246-7400

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Some studies say that Chinese women in massage parlors are not forced into prostitution per se, but they are prostituting on their own by flying into the U.S. on their own will. A report like this shows the contrary evidence. It also confirms the anecdotes that Chinese massage parlors are connected to marriage fraud. I am not sure how Sanfratello was involved with Wo. They were just co-habitating. Some say that massage parlor owners and victims are use American citizens to obtain green card through marriage fraud. I don't know if this is the similar case. Police must look into what's behind the women's ownership; i.e. who was the investors, how she opened the massage parlor, etc. 

Sex Trafficking of mentally disabled victim in Missouri

Beth Phillips, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced today that four southern Missouri men and a St. Louis, Mo., man -- among them the postmaster general of Nevada, Mo. -- have been indicted by a federal grand jury for their roles in a commercial sex trafficking conspiracy. The indictment alleges that a young, mentally deficient woman was sexually abused and tortured for several years in a Lebanon, Mo., home, and forced to work as an exotic dancer at local strip clubs.

"The allegations contained in this indictment are among the most horrific ever prosecuted in this district," Phillips said. "The sexual torture suffered over a period of years by the victim is highly disturbing.

"The Human Trafficking Rescue Project is specifically designed to address the problem of human trafficking from every direction," Phillips added. "We are providing the victims of human trafficking with the protection and support they need. At the same time, as this indictment illustrates, we are prosecuting both the supply and the demand, both the traffickers and their customers."

Edward Bagley, Sr., 43, and Michael Stokes, 62, both of Lebanon, Mo., Dennis Henry, 50, of Wheatland, Mo., James Noel, 44, of Springfield, Mo., and Bradley Cook, 31, of St. Louis, Mo., were charged in an 11-count indictment that was returned under seal by a grand jury in Kansas City on Wednesday, Sept. 8. The indictment was unsealed and made public Thursday upon the arrests and initial court appearances of the defendants. Henry is the postmaster general of Nevada, Mo. Stokes is a national representative for Disabled American Veterans.

The federal indictment alleges that, from December 2002 to February 2009, Bagley coerced a female victim, identified as "FV," to become a sex slave and sexually tortured her. Bagley allegedly advertised online that FV could be sexually tortured during live online sessions or in person. The indictment states that Stokes, Henry, Noel and Cook participated in this conspiracy as customers who paid Bagley to sexually abuse and torture FV. The indictment also alleges that Bagley forced FV to work as a stripper and kept the proceeds from that work.

The federal investigation began after Bagley allegedly suffocated and electrocuted FV during a torture session to a state of cardiac arrest on Feb. 27, 2009. FV, who was 23 years old at that time, received emergency medical treatment and was hospitalized.

According to the federal indictment, Bagley enticed FV, then a 16-year-old runaway who suffered from mental deficiencies, into his trailer home in December 2002. Bagley promised FV, who had grown up in foster care homes, that he would help her to become a model and a dancer; she was given her own bedroom and provided with clothes and food. Bagley allegedly gave FV marijuana and ecstasy, showed her images of pornography and sadomasochism activities, and began sexually abusing her.

Bagley began sexually torturing FV in February 2004, according to the indictment, when she turned 18 years old and Bagley had her sign a "sex slave contract," which he convinced FV legally bound her to him as his slave for the rest of her life. If FV attempted to stop the activity or cried for help, the indictment says, Bagley escalated the torture.

Bagley allegedly threatened to kill FV and demonstrated to her that he could do so by keeping numerous guns in the home. Bagley shot animals that FV cared for in front of her, the indictment says, and bragged about the bodies he had already buried in the woods behind the trailer home. Bagley also threatened to bury FV alive, the indictment says, and showed her a video demonstrating how he intended to do it.

Bagley had FV tattooed to mark her as his property, the indictment says, including a bar code on her neck, a tribal tattoo on her back with the letter "S" to mark her as a slave, and the Chinese symbol for slave on her ankle.

Between February 2005 and February 2009, Bagley tortured FV on live webcasts on the Internet. Noel paid Bagley $300 to watch Bagley torture FV, and to sexually abuse and torture FV. Henry and Stokes also sexually abused and tortured FV, and watched Bagley torture FV. Cook sexually abused and tortured FV and downloaded streaming Internet video of Bagley torturing FV.

Stokes gave Bagley steaks, cigarettes, coats, clothing, lighters and cash. Henry and Stokes paid approximately $2,900 for Bagley to transport FV to California in December 2006 for a photo shoot in which FV performed sexual acts. Henry accompanied Bagley on the trip. Stokes paid Bagley $300 for a torture session, and also gave him money to build a home-made device to sexually torture FV. Cook gave Bradley a hard drive with sadomasochism and torture videos downloaded from the Internet.

In addition to the criminal conspiracy, each of the five defendants is also charged with one count of commercial sex trafficking and one count of using the Internet to facilitate the unlawful activity.

Bagley is also charged with forced labor trafficking and document servitude. The federal indictment alleges that Bagley forced FV to work as a stripper and exotic dancer at adult entertainment clubs from June 2007 to February 2009. Bagley allegedly earned approximately $112,200 from FV's work. According to the indictment, Bagley punished FV with torture and physical and sexual abuse for failing to be a top earner at the adult entertainment clubs where he had her dance and strip. Bagley allegedly confiscated FV's identification documents, including her state-issued identification card, birth certificate and Social Security card, at the time he had her sign the "sex slave contract."

Bagley is also charged with using the Internet for enticement, enticement to travel for sexual activity, conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance to a person under the age of 21 and being a drug user in possession of firearms and ammunition.

Bagley and Henry are also charged together in one count of transportation for sexual activity. Cook is also charged with one count of being a drug user in possession of firearms and ammunition.

The federal indictment also contains a forfeiture allegation, which would require Bagley to forfeit to the government any proceeds obtained from the alleged offenses, as well as any property used to commit the alleged offenses, including $112,200 allegedly obtained by the forced labor trafficking of the victim, two computers, sex toys and paraphernalia and torture devices and 11 firearms. Cook would also be required to forfeit three computers, a hard drive, two Xbox 360s and seven firearms.

Under federal statutes, a conviction for commercial sex trafficking carries a penalty of a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in federal prison without parole. A conviction for either commercial sex trafficking or forced labor trafficking that involves aggravated sexual abuse carries a maximum penalty of life in federal prison without parole.

Phillips cautioned that the charges contained in this indictment are simply accusations, and not evidence of guilt.

Evidence supporting the charges must be presented to a federal trial jury, whose duty is to determine guilt or innocence.

http://www.nevadadailymail.com/story/1663332.html

Global human trafficking roundup (March 17-19, 2012)

NORTH AMERICA

Connecticut: The new anti-trafficking bill seeks to deter underage sex ads. If implemented, the bill will make online and printed publishers liable for felony charges if they run an escort service that exploited minors. The crime will be punishable with up to 10 years in prison or $10,000 fine.

EUROPE

UK: Metro police investigation method is under heavy criticism by local politicians. A report by Silence On Violence accuses the police of heavy handed approach to brothel raids and criticized police performance of less than 1% success rate.

ASIA

Australia: Federal police says that human trafficking in Australia is increasing. Many foreign women are smuggled into sex industry, construction, and manufacture sectors for slave labor. Many women come from Asia and Eastern Europe.

Thailand: Authority says that labor trafficking of migrant workers remain rampant in the country. According to the authority, many young girls come from Laos are forced into prostitution. Traffickers recruit not only victims but also customers to exploit young girls in karaokes and bars.

AFRICA

Ghana:

Global human trafficking roundup (March 16, 2012)

NORTH AMERICA

Indiana: The state makes the first charge under the new anti-trafficking law. A 29 years old pimp James Martin is charged with the felony of promoting human trafficking and others for transporting a 14 years old victim for prostitution. Martin and the victim lived together.

Oregon: Eugene man was sentenced to 188 months in federal prison for trafficking two minors. He was convicted of commercially sexually exploiting the victims. According to victims, he never allowed them to contact friends and family. Also, he gave victims false identification to use in case that they were in contact with police.

New York: Online sex trade is flourishing despite the state's counter trafficking effort. Law enforcement criticizes websites providing sexual services. Simultaneously, they argue these websites allow law enforcement to find victims.

EUROPE

Serbia: The first shelter for trafficking victims is open this week. The shelter was established with the donation from Japanese government. Japanese authority said that over 140 projects are in place for trafficking victims in Serbia. The victims will receive legal and psychological counseling as well as employment training.

ASIA

The Philippines: The authority is investigating the case involving over 30 victims trafficked to Syria. They were working in Syria for approximately four years. Some of them were minors when they first recruited illegally.

Global human trafficking roundup(March 12, 2012)

NORTH AMERICA

Colorado: A CEO was indicted on human trafficking charges. He allegedly brought foreign nurses from abroad to work as teachers at a false college. Upon arrival, however, he forced them into working at long term care facilities. He is currently released on bond. Law makers attempt to make prosecution of traffickers easier. The senate committee unanimously passed the bill HB 12-1151 to grant victims better rights and prosecutors easier to convict traffickers.

Texas: Authorities face challenges in collecting statewide data on human trafficking. The lack of uniform reporting system hinders policymakers from measuring the scope of the problem to invent better policy mechanisms.

EUROPE

Germany: Thai police said that they arrested a 61 years old pimp from Germany. The arrest came about after the police received a tip from an under age victim who was prostituted in his prostitution ring. The German man and his Thai partner allegedly were running a prostitution ring at a club in Soi Kaonoi. The investigation continues.

Norway: Three Filipino nurses were rescued from a trafficking ring. A couple running a furniture company recruited three nurses from the Philippines with a promise of a job at Olsen Hospital in Norway. According to the report the nurses were forced to borrow money and pay off the loans to the recruiters from wage deduction.

ASIA

Australia: Australian Federal police raises awareness of human trafficking. AFP reports that it rescued more than 200 people from human trafficking incidents in the past. It also hopes that more officers are aware of human trafficking in the country.

China: Police rescued 24,000 women and children from trafficking rings last year. Over all, police rescued over 8000 children and 15,000 women, and caught 3195 traffickers in 2011. The highlights of police arrests in 2011 includes a trafficking ring bust of women to Angola.

Global human trafficking roundup (March 9, 2012)

NORTH AMERICA

Florida: Legislators passed a bill to make it easier to prosecute traffickers. If implemented, the bill HB 7049, will combine trafficking laws into one making it more practical to use for prosecutors. It also increases penalties against traffickers and includes pornography to "the sexually explicit performances in the legal definition of the crime."

EUROPE

UK: Police arrested three people for sex trafficking case in Northern Ireland. Police said that the arrest was a result of sex month investigation in the area. During the investigation, police seized cash and documents.

Malta: Many women from Eastern European countries, including Russia, are sexually enslaved in Malta. They are lured into working at entertainment industries in Malta. Upon arrival, however, young women are forced into prostitution.

Romania: A family is sentenced for bringing young girl and a man to UK and forced them into slavery. According to the report, the pair subjected the girl to working for a long hours, a poor living condition, and physical abuse. The 53 years old man was also forced to work without payment and subject to physical and sexual assault by the pair.

ASIA

Thailand: Experts say Thailand is on the brick of becoming the world's worst country for trafficking in person problem. Police recently rescued 11 boys forced into begging on the street. Five men forced them into begging after dressing them as monks. The trafficking ring forced hundreds of children into begging nationwide, according to the report.

Japan: Japan commits approximately $27 million to fight human trafficking. The funds will support projects to fight trafficking and migrant workers' rights in developing countries like Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, and Kenya.

AFRICA

South Africa: 16 girls were rescued from a brothel in Durban. According to the police, their boyfriends lured the girls with a promise of job offers. Upon arrival, the girls were forced into prostitution.

(CNN) -- Kimberly Ritter could not believe what she was seeing.

Girls wearing almost nothing at all, suggesting all sorts of sexual acts, listed on page after page of Backpage.com's escorts section. When she looked closer at the photos, she noticed something eerie.

She could recognize the rooms.

Ritter is a meeting planner at Nix Conference and Meeting Management of St. Louis. She and her co-workers work with 500 hotels around the world and visit about 50 properties annually. She can identify many hotel chains used in escort ads by their comforters, bathroom sinks, air conditioning units and door locks. Sometimes, she can also identify a specific property.

Meet Kimberly Ritter, sex trafficking sleuth.

A child protection code of conduct

Meeting planner Kimberly Ritter

Ritter has become a force in the international anti-trafficking movement, where she uses her expertise to identify the mainstream middle-end and high-end hotels used by traffickers.

She negotiates with hotels to fight trafficking at their properties, while also trying to convince hotel general managers that it's good business to fight trafficking through signing the Tourism Child-Protection Code of Conduct, a voluntary set of principles that businesses can adopt to fight trafficking. Her firm has created a version of the code for meeting planners and was the first signatory a few weeks ago.

Ritter hopes to recruit other planners to sign on to the code.

Once Ritter and her co-workers realized they could have an impact, "we thought this should be something all meeting planners could do," she said.

Although anti-trafficking organizations can't be sure how many people are forced into commercial sex work, the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking estimates that human trafficking is a $32 billion business worldwide, with $15.5 billion coming from industrialized countries. (That includes forced sexual and nonsexual commercial labor of adults and children.)

Is website to blame for killings?

Backpage defends sexy ads

New exhibit on modern-day slavery

An estimated 100,000 to 300,000 children are at risk of commercial sex exploitation in the United States, according to End Child Prostitution and Trafficking (ECPAT), which created the tourism code. The National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline (888-373-7888) has recorded 46,000 phone calls over the past four years requesting information, reporting tips about trafficking and connecting about 3,600 victims of sex trafficking to social services. (The hotline takes calls about sex or labor trafficking.)

Trafficking isn't simply sex for sale

Sex trafficking isn't prostitution, which is engaging in sex with someone for payment. The crime of sex trafficking has three parties: one person holding the victim, while using "force, fraud or coercion" to make the victim engage in sex acts for payment, and the third party paying for the sex, said Brad Myles, executive director of the Polaris Project, which operates the hotline with funding from the U.S. government. If the victim is a child, no force, fraud or coercion is required for the sex to be a crime.

Escort ads posted online don't obviously state that sex with children is being sold, Ritter said, but customers who want children know to look for words like "fresh," "candy" and "new to the game." The underage victims are often runaways and victims of sexual abuse who are vulnerable to pimps promising modeling jobs, money, food and drugs.

After a pimp and customer make a deal, usually online or over the phone, hotels are an obvious place where the sex can take place. "There's privacy, a neutral place for a customer to come to, certain amount of anonymity and you don't have to stay long term," said Noelle Collins, an assistant U.S. attorney and human trafficking coordinator for the Eastern District of Missouri, who prosecutes these cases. "This can happen anywhere, but hotels are logical places where it could be found."

Sex trafficking wasn't on Ritter's mind when she met with the U.S. Federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph to book the federation's 2011 conference. That year, the nuns decided to take a stand on the issue. "We've always done some type of social action [at our conference]," said Sister Patty Johnson, executive director of the federation, which encompasses the 16 congregations of Sisters of St. Joseph in the United States. "We like to leave the city [we visit] a tiny bit better than when we came."

The nuns told Nix they wanted their hotel to sign the tourism code of conduct developed by ECPAT, a worldwide network of organizations and individuals that fights commercial sex exploitation of children. Hilton Worldwide, Wyndham Worldwide, Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group (which includes the Radisson brand) and Delta Air Lines are all signatories to the code. After Ritter's initial online research turned up hotels she recognized, she agreed to raise the issue with their potential venues.

Hotels can train to fight trafficking

Many hotel executives have security measures designed to fight trafficking but express concern about being publicly identified with the issue. An exception is Millennium Hotel St. Louis general manager Dominic Smart. After learning about the problem, Smart got his parent company's permission to become a pilot program. Often, hotel executives don't want customers to think their hotels have a prostitution or sex trafficking problem. (The code requires annual reporting.) Smart, who said he hasn't had a case yet, didn't worry about it.

Previously on CNN: Wyndham chain boosts staff training to fight child prostitution

"We felt it was our responsibility to get involved and fight human trafficking," said Smart, whose hotel signed onto ECPAT, went through training for managers and line staff, and hosted the nuns' conference.

Training of hotel staff is key, said Michelle Gulebart, project coordinator for ECPAT-USA. Hotel managers may never spot the signs of sex trafficking, but housekeeping and room service employees often know something isn't right. They're just not sure what. "Hotel rooms are used as venues for exploitation," Gulebart said. "A pimp might hold up one or two girls in a room and might run traffic out of a room. They'll post ads on a website and send a girl to the room next door."

Learn the signs of trafficking victims

Red flags to watch for: Someone besides the guest rents a room, checks in without luggage and leaves the hotel. The child left in the room may seem confused about his or her own name; may appear helpless, ashamed, nervous or disoriented; may show signs of abuse such as bruising in various stages of healing; or may have tattoos that reflect money or ownership.

The child usually doesn't have any spending money or identification; cannot make eye contact; and wears clothes printed with slogans such as "Daddy's Girl" or inappropriate clothes for the weather. Sometimes, the child will come on to various men during the check-in process.

"We've trained them on the red flags, what to look for," Smart said. "If they see them, they report it to their manager and we would take over from there. The manager can assess and go to the police if need be."

How to help

Guests can report signs of trafficking

Hotel guests can also keep their eyes open for those red flags, said social worker Theresa Flores, an Ohio-based survivor of underage sex trafficking and an anti-trafficking activist. Guests who see the red flags can simply call the national hotline to report their suspicions, without ever leaving their names. Flores often travels to cities with big sports events and political conventions to educate hotel and motel owners, donating thousands of bars of soap listing the hotline for victims and witnesses to trafficking.

Most of the country's state attorneys general and many anti-trafficking activists blame Backpage.com and other websites for not doing enough to fight sex trafficking. Backpage's lawyer says the company takes many steps to fight the problem.

"Any adult ads that are posted are monitored in real time, 24/7," wrote Steve Suskin, legal counsel for Village Voice Media, which owns Backpage, in an e-mailed statement to CNN.com. "All nudity is banned, even for adult ads, and anyone who attempts to post an ad that's suggestive of an underage or exploited minor is immediately reported to NCMEC [the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children], which is designated by the FBI to alert local law enforcement to rescue any child at risk in a hotel or other location."

Unlike other websites, Backpage doesn't allow Web posters to post anonymously, Suskin wrote.

"Backpage charges $1.00 to post in personals, because it holds users accountable and provides credit card information to police so they can identify, locate, arrest and prosecute those who use common carriers to prey on children," he wrote. "We continue to invest millions of dollars in human, technological, and other resources to detect and report suspected child predators and to help law enforcement apprehend and prosecute them."

With so much of the sex trafficking business migrating to the Internet, the crime still has to take place somewhere. "Hotels can really be part of the solution," said Myles, the Polaris Project executive director. "These are crimes, these are ways that women are being mistreated, and these are forms of violence against women. A lot of hotels don't want to be associated with it."

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/29/travel/hotel-sex-trafficking/

58 people charged in Virginia prostitution bust

http://www.wtvr.com/news/wtvr-prostitution-sting-59-charged-20120126,0,5784446.story

HESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. (WTVR) - Nearly 60 peoplewere arrested for prostitution-related crimes during a three-day undercover operation, Chesterfield Police revealed in a statement Thursday morning.

Police said those charged ranged in age from 19 to 71 years old.

Police said the arrests were the result of a joint operation involving Chesterfield County detectives, Henrico County detectives and the FBI that went undercover, posing as buyers and sellers of sex.

They said the goal of the November-December operation was to "impact in the local human trafficking enterprise."

All 58 people arrested face prostitution or solicitation of prostitution charges. Nine also face a Use of a vehicle for solicitation of prostitution charge. Twelve face what police called "collateral charges."

However, many details of the bust are largely being kept a secret. [PHOTOS: Click here to see mug shots and a list of who was arrested]

"Most likely you will find them within prostitution and prostitution rings," said Sara Pomeroy, advocate for anti trafficking legislation.

Pomeroy was not surprised to learn that police charged John H. Hunter III of Chesterfield with pandering.

Officials said his case would be considered trafficking because he was arranging sexual exchanges for women and taking a cut of their earnings.

"Most of the time these victims of trafficking are lured in to..forced in to prostituting themselves," said Pomeroy.

Pomeroy believes the big bust can cause big problems for an operating ring. But more importantly than the large number of arrests, she said is the message it sends about how communities respond not just to prostitution, but to trafficking.

"If you can arrest one and really get a strong charge that sends a message to the rest to say this is not ok in our state," she said.

http://www.fbi.gov/richmond/press-releases/2012/ohio-man-arrested-for-transporting-a-minor-across-state-lines-for-purposes-of-prostitution?utm_campaign=email-Immediate&utm_medium=email&utm_source=richmond-press-releases&utm_content=70293

February 10, 2012

RICHMOND, VA—Calvin L. Winbush, 37, of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, also known as “Good Game,” was arrested this morning by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on charges of transporting a minor across state lines with the intent that the minor engage in Ppostitution. Winbush faces a mandatory minimum term of 10 years’ incarceration and a maximum of life imprisonment if convicted on these charges.

Neil H. MacBride, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and Michael F.A. Morehart, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Richmond Field Office, made the announcement after Winbush’s initial appearance before United States Magistrate Judge M. Hannah Lauck.

According to court documents and court proceedings today, Winbush transported three females, one of whom was only 15 years old, from Ohio to Richmond, Virginia at the end of December, 2011, with the intent that the females, including the juvenile, engage in prostitution while in Richmond. Winbush was originally arrested by Henrico County Division of Police on January 3, 2012 on pandering charges after the HPD and FBI responded to a hotel in Richmond, Virginia and encountered Winbush, along with the juvenile female and two other females.

The investigation was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Henrico County Division of Police, Vice Unit as part of an ongoing initiative between the FBI and HCDP targeting persons engaged in human trafficking. Assistant United States Attorney Jamie L. Mickelson is prosecuting the case on behalf of the United States.

Criminal complaints are only charges and not evidence of guilt. A defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty.