Cumberland County massage parlor operators draw jail terms for selling sex - PennLive.com

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Cumberland County District Attorney Sean McCormack’s continuing campaign against sex trafficking at massage parlors resulted in jail terms for three West Shore operators Monday.

Two other defendants face criminal trials this week.

The sentences handed down by Judge Christylee Peck are believed to be the first in which spa operators have been sent to jail.

Shibiao Hu, 57, of Rockville, Maryland, the operator of a parlor in Camp Hill, was sentenced to 14 months in state prison on racketeering and dealing in proceeds of unlawful activities.

Min Dong, 56, of the 100 block of South 32nd Street, Camp Hill, a former spa operator who as a landlord leased four properties to Hu and others who she knew were offering sexual services, was sentenced to nine months in Cumberland County Prison on similar charges.

Qi Guo, 33, who is Dong’s daughter, will serve two months in county prison for joining her mom’s operation after emigrating to the United States from China.

The cases sprang out of a lengthy investigation of five Asian-operated massage parlors in Cumberland County’s West Shore communities.

The targeted parlors were:

• New Healing Hands Spa, 33 Gettysburg Pike, Upper Allen Township
• 149 Massage, also known as May Spa, 149 S. 32nd St., Camp Hill
• Lily Spa, 305 Herman Ave., Lemoyne
• Mary Spa, 3803 Gettysburg Road, Lower Allen Township
• JOJO Spa, 5010 Carlisle Pike, Hampden Township

McCormack, leading with his office’s Criminal Investigation Division, has been trying to attack both spa operators selling sex behind legitimate business fronts and the customers who make up the market.

Monday’s sentences represent the first completed convictions of operators, all of whom pleaded guilty or no contest in advance of pending criminal trials this week.

Hu received the harshest punishment, perhaps because he was most directly involved in running a spa on Market Street in Camp Hill.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Julia Skinner noted that Hu had advertised sexual services online, kept careful records, and came to the spa weekly to collect cash.

Skinner also noted that after business at the Camp Hill spa was interrupted following the execution of a search warrant in August 2023, Hu reopened the business the following month, with a new worker found to be offering sex acts.

County detectives also said they had evidence that Hu was talking with his on-site manager, Yan Qiu, about opening additional shops.

Hu, who said he was a chef by trade, told Peck he had ventured into the spa business several years ago as a way to make extra money to put his children through college.

Speaking through an interpreter as his wife and two sons looked on, he said he was ashamed of his conduct in the matter and would never do it again.

Dong, who became Hu’s landlord, came to the United States in 2008, in search of better lives for her and her daughter, attorney Tom Kelley said.

She worked in massage parlors, first in New York and later in central Pennsylvania, eventually starting her own business here.

Kelley argued that as an operator, Dong’s record was clean, barring one episode where she paid a civil fine for employing two unlicensed masseuses.

After selling her businesses, Kelley said, it was tenant operators in the buildings Dong owned who started selling sexual favors for cash.

But, he conceded Monday, Dong did not do anything to stop the illicit sex trade, and continued to collect her rent payments while knowing some of the employees were likely engaged in prostitution.

Of Guo, Kelley said Dong brought her into her business primarily as a paper partner.

But, he conceded, Guo did take over her mom’s affairs for months at a time when Dong returned to China to visit her parents.

It’s one reason, Peck stated, that she gave Dong the harsher sentence of the two: “Defendant [Dong] should have been protecting her daughter when she was in a position to do so. Instead, she worked to bring her into a corrupt organization.”

Dong, who has agreed to forfeit most of her properties as part of the plea agreement and has taken a job at Boscov’s, was made eligible to seek work release status at the prison.

Prosecutors noted that Dong is now a naturalized U.S. citizen. Hu and Guo are both here legally on green cards at present.

Skinner said Monday she would defer comment on the sentences until after the completion of this week’s scheduled trial of Zigui Zheng, another spa operator.

In all, 10 interconnected massage parlors across Cumberland, Dauphin, and York counties were targeted during the 2023 investigation, dubbed “Closed2Trafficking.”

McCormack said then that investigators, initially prompted by complaints from the public, found that operators were placing women in these businesses to perform sex acts for money.

In a separate wave of searches conducted last year, two spas in the Carlisle area were closed, and their operators were charged.

Cumberland County prosecutors have focused their most serious criminal cases on the business operators and landlords, tending to see workers as victims of sex trafficking.

But McCormack’s office has also run regular stings aimed at reducing the demand for illicit sex acts.

In those operations, carried out under the name “Impact Demand,“ 98 would-be customers have been charged to date with promoting prostitution and other offenses.