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JERREY ROBERTS

Former Massachusetts State Police Detective Lt. John Gibbons talks about Chinese organized crime at the Nortwestern district attorney's office in Northampton Dec. 16 after a pair of prostitution arrests at massage parlors in Hadley.

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GAZETTE FILE PHOTO

Zen Shu Li and Xiumei Zheng, both of Hadley, leave Eastern Hampshire District Court after their arraignment on prostitution charges Nov. 5. Authorities have linked their arrests to a much larger criminal enterprise.

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JERREY ROBERTS

Because of an ongoing probe, Assistant District Attorney Michael A. Cahillane says he can't name the group behind the Hadley prostitution ring.

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KATHLEEN DUNCAN

Hadley Massage Therapy at 215 Russell St. appears to be back in business after it was shut down because of prostitution in November. It is unclear if the business has a license to operate.

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KATHLEEN DUNCAN

The establishment formerly known as Jane's Spa at 206 Russell St. sits vacant after it was shut down as an alleged brothel.

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GAZETTE FILE PHOTO

A police officer enters Hadley Massage Therapy at 215 Russell St. in Hadley Nov. 4 after removing evidence from the site.

Day one of a two-day series

HADLEY - A Saugus man with chronic back pain was in town in late May of 2009 and wanted a massage. He saw Hadley Massage Therapy at 215 Russell St., and stopped in for treatment.

What the massage therapist attempted to give him, however, was sex, according to court documents.

James Goggin, 41, was outraged when he was touched inappropriately by the masseuse, which he channeled in a June 12 letter of complaint - handwritten in all capital letters - to the commonwealth's Division of Professional Licensure in Boston, demanding that action be taken.

The man from Saugus had walked into what police say was a Chinese house of prostitution operating under the guise of a massage parlor.

Moreover, court documents and subsequent interviews with law enforcement agents allege that these so-called "massage parlors" - a host of which were raided across the region in November - bear a direct connection to Chinese organized crime entities and a human trafficking enterprise based in Flushing, N.Y. Police say many of the women working in these kinds of places are doing so against their will, in a sort of modern-day indentured servitude.

The tipster

Hadley is hardly a town where one would expect to find businesses that sell sex, let alone connections to organized crime. But that's exactly what John Burke, inspector for the Albany County, N.Y., Sheriff's Office, told Hadley police officer Adam Bartlett in a phone conversation in mid-June.

Burke, a 40-year veteran of law enforcement who has been involved in countless prostitution cases, identified two sites in town: Hadley Massage Therapy, an unassuming two-story cape-style home at 215 Russell St., and Jane's Spa, an average plaza tenant located across the street in the Norwottuck Shops at 206 Russell St. He said he received word of the alleged brothels from a credible informant from the Albany area.

Nearly identical operations were under way at six other sites in the Pioneer Valley: in East Longmeadow, Longmeadow, Chicopee, Springfield and West Springfield, Burke said.

These places were not operating independently from one another, Burke said.

Investigations by his unit showed that the massage parlors in western Massachusetts - just like those in Albany County, N.Y. - were the outgrowth of a Chinese criminal enterprise that traces back the most populated part of Queens and the second largest Chinatown in the city.

"We saw plates. We saw that they were going back to the same location. One we hit last time, one of the girls opened up. We got her with I don't how many thousands of dollars that was going to go back to N.Y. that day. We got lucky. We hit it at the right time," said Burke.

The probe

By September, the Hadley police was holding interdepartmental meetings with the state's Division of Professional Licensure, Massachusetts State Police, Chicopee police and others, setting the groundwork for a case.

Investigator Shawn Croke, of the licensure division, told Bartlett at the time that neither Hadley Massage Therapy nor Jane's Spa had a license to operate.

Hadley police sought the assistance of then-Detective Lt. John Gibbons, who at the time was the commander of the state police unit assigned to the Northwestern district attorney's office in Northampton.

Gibbons, now the U.S. marshal for the Bay State, gave Hadley the use of what police call a CRI, a confidential reliable informant, whom he had used in a number of successfully prosecuted cases in Hampden Superior and District courts.

Undercover

The routines inside the massage parlors were exactly as Inspector Burke had described: a woman in charge greeted the customers, took initial payments, ranging from $40 to $60, and led customers to a room for the massage; another woman entered the room, asked the customer to disrobe completely, and began the massage; during the body work, the masseuse brushed up against the patron's genitals, and at the end of the massage asked if the patron wanted a "home run" or "release," and worked out terms for additional payment, which varied with the level of sexual service but generally topped out at an additional $60.

In some cases, the masseuse proceeded directly into the sexual service while simultaneously negotiating a price.

"They make a lot of money. I mean a lot of money. It's a big profit," said Burke.

Given $70 by police, on Aug. 10 and Sept. 9, the state police informant marched into the two parlors.

"'Please come in, me make you feel good, me make you feel good, me love you,'" said the masseuse in broken English during the August probe into Hadley Massage Therapy, according to the informant.

She was described as an Asian woman, about 5 feet tall, 35 to 40 years old, with black silky shoulder-length hair.

The woman touched the informant's genitals and went topless through much of the massage, according to sworn police statements.

At the initiation of further sexual contact, the informant left, according to the statements.

During the September sting at Jane's, the masseuse, who called herself "Jane," tore the boxer shorts off the informant, police said.

She offered "relief" while rubbing him inappropriately, which he declined.

Jane told him to come back with more money, and that she would have sex with him.

The informant told police he heard what he believed were people having sex in adjacent rooms during this visit.

Police executed further probes, with the undercover services of Detective Michael Gruska of the Agawam Police Department for a sting on Oct. 28, and state trooper William McMillan on Oct. 22 and again on Nov. 3.

The two undercover officers detailed nearly identical experiences, with each making excuses - such as prearranged cell phone calls - to leave after being propositioned.

The raid

By early November, police had what they needed to execute a search warrant to shut the Hadley massage parlors down.

Hadley also sought out Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the use of its interpreters and because there was "reason to believe that multiple employees or owners are illegal aliens," Mason writes in court documents.

On Nov. 4 around 2 p.m., simultaneous to raids across the Valley, members of the Hadley Police Department, state police, ICE, the Division of Professional Licensure and the federal Bureau of Diplomatic Security went into Jane's Spa and Hadley Massage Therapy, and placed two women under arrest.

Zen Shu Li, 47, of 215 Russell St., and Xiumei Zheng, 43, of 206 Russell St., were taken into custody, charged with engaging in sexual conduct for a fee.

Confiscated between the two sites were a condom, ledgers, laptops, client information sheets, $8,433 in cash, a $1,300 check to landlord David Fil, electronic translation devices, bags of unknown pills, lotions, tissues, camcorders and more.

Police haven't released the names of clients.

After a brief court appearance, the two women were bailed out on Nov. 5 by a man from Woodside, N.Y., a borough of Queens with a substantial Chinese population that's nine minutes from Flushing.

The women appeared with an interpreter for a Dec. 16 pretrial conference, and their lawyers returned to court Wednesday for a status conference, according to Assistant District Attorney Michael Cahillane, the chief prosecutor in their cases.

They are due back in court for another hearing on March 24.

The Bureau of Diplomatic Security would not comment on the pair's immigration status, and neither of their attorneys, Susan Miles and Randall Smith, of Northampton and Amherst, returned calls for comment.

Unidentified women who answered Li's and Zheng's phones did not have enough of a grasp of English to speak about the raids. Inspector Burke said that was a common tactic among foreign prostitutes.

Burke said alleged prostitutes in this situation often have their fines paid by the parent criminal organization, because the crime of prostitution is a misdemeanor and because bail is often dwarfed by their future earnings.

"What they normally do, is that they bail, and then they'll fly," said Burke.

He cited a recent N.Y. case in which a judge bailed two women for $20,000, who then flew the coop.

Not all of the defendants from the raids on Pioneer Valley establishments have stayed put. Two of four women busted from the East Longmeadow massage therapy practice failed to show up in court Nov. 30.

"They're willing to kiss that money goodbye. Absolutely, it's the cost of doing business. They can make it back in a week," Burke said.

It remains unclear whether the Hadley Massage Therapy at 215 Russell St. is still open. It has a neon sign that says "Open" in its front window, but state regulators did not return calls for comment as to the site's licensing.

Police documents note that the massage parlor there obtained a license during the last week of October, although the Division of Professional Licensure's case regarding Goggin appears to be ongoing.

According to Cahillane, Hadley police "are taking steps to ensure that they are in compliance with licensing."

Experts say that women just like Li and Zheng aren't working in such establishments by their own choosing.

Rather, they are a 21st century indentured servant, paying back an astronomical fee - sometimes upwards of $50,000 - for being brought into this country illegally. "If they don't pay the money they're supposed to pay, these organizations will go after their family. They'll work on their backs until it's paid," said Burke.

Chinese organized crime

Cahillane and U.S. Marshal Gibbons, the Hadley busts are part of a broader picture of criminal activities in Hampshire County related to an Asian criminal enterprise.

"We have seen, in the past, occasions of home invasions and drug activity related to that organization," said Cahillane.

Citing an ongoing investigation, Cahillane would not comment as to which group might be behind the Hadley prostitution ring.

David Shafer, assistant special agent in charge of the Organized Crime Section of the New York Division of the FBI, said he also recalled incidents from the mid-1990s, where some Asian organized crime outfits spread into Massachusetts.

A typical case would go like this: A successful Chinese businessman would move away from Chinatown to a smaller suburb, and open a successful business. The business would attract Chinese workers from the city.

"And then these guys would go back to Chinatown, tell the gangs. They'd go out there and would do a home invasion of those people's residence, rob them at gunpoint, tie them up, maybe kill them," said Shafer.

Gibbons said a similar home invasion incident in East Longmeadow a number of years ago led him to Philadelphia, where there was a murder committed by some of the same criminals from western Massachusetts. "It was all tied in," said Gibbons.

According to Shafer, in many cases prostitution is one of the basic methods by organized crime to generate funding for additional illegal endeavors.

"It's a lower level criminal act, that's the way a lot people view it, but, nonetheless, it's something that permeates the culture, and leads to violence and drugs."