PORTRAIT OF MODERN AMERICAN TRAFFICKING
In 2005, I was approached by a man who came to my regular "home group" of Narcotics Anonymous in Las Vegas. Everyone who was in NA for some time knew I was a member of the program, and also if they knew me they knew I already went to the midnight Saturday night meeting on 3rd and Bridger. I often took men and women I was working with there when they'd have trouble sleeping on a Saturday night in early recovery from drugs and sex work.
I came out of the meeting to find my car wouldn't start. A handsome young man offered to help me start the car who had been at the meeting. I allowed him to and he got it started. I later learned he had gone out during the meeting to rig the car to fail in order to get to know me. He then said he'd come by and finish looking at it at my house the next day and offered to follow me home to make sure I got home okay. How caring!
My mother went into surgery a few days later and didn't wake up for ten days. My husband had just left town and wasn't coming home. I was still recovering from a stroke and not working. Without my husband's income, I couldn't pay the rent on my apartment. The doctors told me either I had to move in with hr to care for her or my mom would have to go into a nursing home for full-time care. I had my daughter to get to school and my mother's care to deal with and now I was facing having to move with no money and being in a lot of pain. This young man stepped up to help me get my kid to school, deal with the doctors, pack my apartment, and just seemed like a blessing to me at first. He had told me he had a girlfriend when we met and I was much older than him so I didn't think it was sexual or even romantic. I was 42 years old and he was only 18 years old so it didn't cross my mind he was being anything other than a fellow addict in NA trying to be of service.
He then told me he'd broken up with the girlfriend and was interested in me. For months I put him off - but then after a medical emergency where I almost died I broke and threw myself into what I thought was a midlife crisis affair with a younger man. Only he wouldn't stop seeing me no matter how many times I tried to break it off. After sleeping together for some months, he started introducing me to his friends. They were cops, sheriff's, marshall's, private investigators, etc., and I was impressed with the quality of his friends being such "reputable" people. He was taking me to BBQ's, car races, and other events where he was getting me introduced to his "friends".
Within a year, he was talking to me about moving in together. He was taking me apartment hunting, and even introduced me to his father explaining that we were going to be living together. I had no reason to think this was anything other than a "real" relationship. As the date came for us to move into an apartment we'd found he started telling me that his "friends" were more than just involved in law enforcement. To show me what he meant, he took me over to one woman's house who was supposedly a retired guard at Clark County jail. The house was a B&D house right out of "50 Shades of Grey". He explained to me by keeping everything about B&D then no one was involved in "prostitution" and therefore no one was getting arrested.
I asked him why he was showing me this when he knew I was also running Sex Workers Anonymous and his answer was simple - your husband has left, your mother is about to die, and you aren't physically up to returning to work at a 9 to 5 job. He knew how much money I'd made when I was in the sex industry and his friends needed someone to help with the management end of their operation. When I asked why he needed me to help this woman run one "house" he explained there was much more than a "house" involved - but a whole network of operations they were all involved in spanning from the borders of Mexico in California clear to a spot in Kentucky. Seems the officers would transport the drugs, guns, stolen items, along with the women even in their work cars so if stopped then they'd say it was "evidence" they were transporting. The women were just "inmates being transported". That by working in relays they were covering most of the USA this way.
I told him I'd quit the business back in 1985 and I had no idea why he was even thinking I'd be interested in being a part of this. This is when he revealed he was a Romanian gypsy, and that both he, along with members of his family, were involved in this operation and if we were going to get married then I had to understand what his job was. I told him I thought he was a car mechanic who wanted to open his own shop. He then told me how he was a mechanic all right but not what I thought. Seems they would offer to park the trick's cars for them as a valet service, and then they were replacing authentic car parts on these luxury cars with cheap knock-offs which would often break down days later. Then they'd sell the parts as "refurbished" through the back door of Autozone. He showed me the car parts alone he was dealing in was bringing in $10,000 a week.
I told him I'd quit because I didn't want to ever go back to jail ever again. This is when he set about showing me how "fool proof" the operation was. Right before my eyes he showed me records of an inmate in the Las Vegas jail which was there one minute, and gone the next. That's how much control over the system these guys had he told me assuring me that "with the chief of police, the prosecutor, and a couple of politicians in their pocket" I wouldn't have to worry about being arrested if I decided to join him in this operation.
I allowed him to show me how everything was set up and took mental notes. Then I created a file outlining the whole operation and stupidly took the file to the Chief of Police in Las Vegas at the time, Chief Gillispie. The next morning I had a knock on the door. One of the women in the operation who was pregnant was there. I asked what happened and she told me she'd been put out on the street at 2:00 a.m. when they came in and cleaned everything out - the women, the drugs, the furniture, everything. She had just been put out on the street because she was pregnant and she said they didn't want to transport her anywhere in her condition. She had no money, no clothes, no family, and nowhere to go. I went about getting her settled into a motel and then went to see what had happened. Everything down to the woodwork had been cleared out and I could even smell the bleach from the cleaning.
I contacted a reporter and asked him to get involved. He arranged a "ride along" with the Las Vegas police on the weekend I told him there would be a drop. The one operation that was left was the Asian's in a private house. I couldn't get to the women in a private house and they were only seeing "johns" who came in from the airport from China speaking Mandarin, This prevented us from getting help to them to get them out. The police had told me there was no way to get an undercover agent in the operation because they "didn't have anyone who spoke Mandarin". I had been offered a job as director of ATLAS that year and thought I was about to take the job.
Only I opened the paper to see Terri Miller, a school teacher from Pahrump, had been given my job instead. No one had told me and the man who had offered me the job, Adam Freer, was no longer working with the Salvation Army. I told Terri about the whole operation going on and what we were trying to shut down and expose and she looked at me like I was insane. I told her she'd soon "see for herself I wasn't crazy" and waited for the day to come.
Sure enough, my phone rang. Terri told me 24 women, and bags of drugs, had just been found in a private home and the victims had been taken to the Salvation Army. She asked me to go with her to help her interview the women. When we arrived 20 minutes later - we were told the women had been "sent home". I was told no file had been taken on who the women were, they refused to give me an address, and also refused to let me speak to any reporters in this matter. This was "Operation Dollhouse" in 2007. http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SAN-MATEO-COUNTY-Two-lawmen-caught-in-raid-of-2563465.php Note Greg Munks was also a member of the trafficking task force in San Mateo. I had told the authorities whoever was making the drop that day for this operation would be coming from San Mateo. I was again patted on the head like I was crazy and blown off by everyone involved in this case I spoke to.
Rick Rizzolo had been drugging customers at the Crazy Horse, then padding their credit card bills. He'd send them home in taxi's he was in control of through a friend so no one wondered why all these zonked out people were being poured into a cab. When they realized they'd been ripped off - they'd call the club where they'd be threatened with exposure to their boss or wife how the charge happened. Sometimes photos were taken while they were knocked out with the dancers who were told to go along with the program. When they would go to the police - they were then threatened with drug possession or being under the influence charges if they pressed. That and some publicity in the local paper their wife, boss and clients would see. http://canadafreepress.com/article/rick-rizzolos-first-week-out-of-prison The dancers would sometimes run over to Buffalo Bill's school to escape where his wrestlers would protect them until we could arrange transportation out of state for them. The day after Rick was released from prison a death threat was left on Jim's car. He was found to have GHB in his system in a report that was being hidden by the coroner. http://www.americanmafia.com/inside_vegas/7-7-08_Inside_Vegas.html Shubert was the Las Vegas prosecutor at this time. http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/crime-courts/schubert-former-prosecutor-convicted-drug-charges-found-dead-home He was found dead in 2013.
We had been dealing with Kemp Shiffer for a long time. But he was operating "within the law" because he was bringing women in from California to work at a legal brothel. He would get them a work permit to work as a waitress in the restaurant of the legal brothel at 16 years of age where sex is legal in Nevada at 16 years old. He finally crossed the line however and got TWO YEARS for over 12 years of turning women out into prostitution. http://goingconcern.com/2011/8/former-irs-investigator-cum-accounting-professor-claims-he-took-money-from-18-year-old-prostitute-to-protect-her-denies-pimp-status Sure it was "legal" when they started. But if they got sick, got arrested, developed a drug problem - out they went from the legal brothel. Then with a prostitution license on their record, maybe being 17 or 18 years old - then what? To the streets is where they went. They were why I helped Sharnel set up a program in northern Nevada instead of southern Nevada. The teenage rejects and cast-offs from the brothels were all winding up in Reno, Lake Tahoe, Carson City, etc. Her program started in 2010 http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/ex-prostitutes-walk-tough-road-economic-freedom-amid-recession It was shut down when she was framed for a felony and sent to prison for five years on a first offense.
I was getting calls from victims of Chris Butler's operation out of California also. It was clear this was part of the same operation. Chris had been a cop for 20 years, and upon retiring became a private investigator who had even been on the Dr. Phil show. He also opened up massage parlors where he sold drugs through them given him by active duty narcotics officers. You can read about his arrest here in 2012. http://patch.com/california/sanramon/private-investigator-christopher-butler-pleads-guilty0df4c86437 Try getting women away from a cop slash best in the country private investigator and you have an idea how hard our job was to help the women who called our hotline.
Now could these women call the National Trafficking Hotline? No. Guess where they would have been referred to if they had? You got it - the local trafficking task force! So they called us and we had to do what we could do while having cops running around telling anyone who would listen we were absolutely "nuts". That or threaten they'd lose their funding, or they're tarnish their reputation by "associating with a bunch of ex-hookers" or 100 other things they could come up with to make sure no one took our phone calls to help THEIR VICTIMS.
In 2014, Officer Armendariz, was found dead in his home before he could testify at a corruption hearing. He was an officer on the local trafficking task force. http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/a-deputys-death-opens-the-door-onto-a-world-corruption-in-sheriff-joes-mcso-6462478
In the corruption case of Paul Tanaka, http://www.dailynews.com/government-and-politics/20150819/former-undersheriff-paul-tanaka-says-corruption-charges-should-be-dropped-codefendant-pleads-guilty the only officer who has been charged so far is Juan Lopez. Juan says he believes this is because he ran against Greg Munks for office. Remember that name? The man who was Chief over Paul was Lee Baca. He's now stepped down because of corruption charges in 2014. http://www.dailynews.com/government-and-politics/20140107/los-angeles-county-sheriff-lee-baca-steps-down
Chief Gillispie stepped down in Las Vegas in 2012 in a corruption case involving 15 other officers. https://nevadastatepersonnelwatch.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/fifteen-members-of-las-vegas-sheriff-douglas-gillespies-organization-have-been-served-with-a-federal-complaint/
In 2014, a constable was caught checking into files on porn performers. http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/constable-shred-investigation-porn-star-searches We don't know the names of who he was looking for, but I know we were getting women out of the sex industry away from their traffickers who wore uniforms and they weren't too happy about it.
In 2013, I got a phone call from woman who resides in Pasadena. She was telling me after being trafficked for 40 years, she told her traffickers she wanted to retire. Then she says she was drug out of her home and slapped with two fake prostitution cases. Further being told if she didn't get back to work she'd be hit with a third charge and then deported. They told her they knew someone on Homeland Security who would see to it she was deported, and then the authorities back in China would receive a photo of her taken while she was drugged that would net her the death penalty. They further told her they knew people in the Chinese government who would see to it she was executed in shame. We hired her an attorney who then ordered the booking tapes of her arrest to see if what she told us was true. He then was threatened by an officer and an attorney he reported to us.
I'd like introduce you to Jooloon David Lee, a Homeland Security officer who lives in Las Vegas, and was found guilty of bribery in Los Angeles. http://mynewsla.com/crime/2015/12/18/ex-la-agent-for-ice-admits-taking-bribes-in-sex-slave-case/ Mr. Lee was also falsely accusing a family of being the traffickers to keep up appearances he was doing his job, while using his office to protect the people he was not only taking bribes from, but assisting in trafficking of the women. http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/las-vegas-restaurateur-says-former-fed-manufactured-criminal-case-against-him Notice he was also connected to Immigration - https://dockets.justia.com/docket/alaska/akdce/3:2008cv00283/11419 Further note this man he was hassling, and putting an ankle bracelet on his wife to keep track of where they were called Lee's boss who told him there was "nothing he could do" about the situation. WOW.
In 2013, nine massage parlors were shut down. One of the pimps was named Zhang. Zhang by the way owns property in Pasadena, California, and is related to the woman who called me for help. http://cjonline.com/news/business/2014-04-07/woman-involved-sex-trafficking-wichita-massage-parlor-gets-probation The women in this parlor had been tricked into coming here from China. The arresting officer spent from 2009 until 2013 trying to get these arrests to stick. Seems when he was a cop he got too much interference from other cops. So he waited until he retired and went to work for the zoning department to get these arrests and free those women. Both he and the judge received death threats so the court didn't allow them to have bail during the trial.
Note these arrests in 2015 of a hotel owner who was arrested in China who was also a member of the People's Congress, or Chinese government. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11636148/Hotel-king-among-47-on-trial-over-Chinese-towns-sex-trade.html Check out the number of massage parlors and escort services this guy owned there. A man who regularly entertained people from America in his five star hotel.
Giving her every reason to believe these people would carry out their threats to her if she didn't go "back to work". The attorney who threatened our attorney then threatened me with a stalking charge if I spoke to her again. He then lied to her and claimed she didn't need my help as he'd expunged her criminal record for her. Only he didn't. When I went to show her that her criminal record was still showing up - I then got a call from a phone number coming from the Pasadena police department from an officer who threatened me again with a stalking charge if I spoke to her again. http://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-c1-prostitute-squad-20131002-dto-htmlstory.html When I asked if he wanted to hear why she was calling me for help he just threatened me again and got off the line. I recorded the threat. I also have the copies of her fake police reports that are charges signed by a judge.
So I think you can see why I got concerned when I read about another ex-officer out of Orange County going out to prostitutes "doing outreach" named "Kevin Brown". Note Kevin Brown had retired from the Orange County police force. http://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-c1-prostitute-squad-20131002-dto-htmlstory.html So he had to have known Mike Corona http://www.ocregister.com/articles/-661698--.html as well as Sheriff Don Haidi. http://www.ocweekly.com/news/lets-play-where-are-they-now-haidl-gang-rapists-6448633
When I got a call from Kevin's "assistant" telling me this story of how Kevin had been this cop for 20 years, and then upon retiring had "found God" and decided to go out and "help prostitutes" all I could think of was "he was watching this stuff going on for 20 years and didn't step up before?" I asked this guy what Kevin was doing when the victims he was supposedly rescuing turned out to have their traffickers be cops and he had no idea what I was talking about. I asked how he was bypassing the traffickers screening to get them up to a motel room - and he had no idea what I was talking about. But he was asking me to send prostitutes up to this guy's hotel room where they would then "go off to a compound somewhere in the desert"? Are you kidding me? I asked to meet this guy and see this ranch and of course never heard from the guy again until "8 Minutes" came out.
When I got the threat to stop speaking to this woman from a Pasadena cop, I contacted the Pasadena Chief to speak to him about it. I got no answer. I went over his head to the city manager. That prompted Chief Sanchez to start calling me three times a day to come in and speak to him in person. I asked him to get the records from the Wichita case so he'd know what I was talking about and I'd give him a week. During this time I wrote to the LAX security and Homeland Security. I told them about this case and that women were coming in from China to be trafficked. This was about June of 2013.
Notice the men in the recent Seattle arrests had been using women from China, but then "when things got hot" started bringing in women from Korea. http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/online-site-where-men-rated-prostitutes-is-shut-down-charges-to-be-filed/ Things weren't just hot here in the USA, but pretty hot over in China too from what I'm reading. Sheldon Adelson, the new owner of the Review Journal I don't think is too happy with me about these Chinese crackdowns - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-15/macau-sex-ring-bust-shows-china-s-expanding-crackdown-on-graft Might be why a reporter told me the Review Journal had put a "lifetime black list on my name and that of SWA no matter how many women die for not having our hotline number". What a wonderful person. These women are telling me they're being raped, beaten, terrorized, forced into selling drugs and performing prostitution, by cops - and when I go and help them get out of the situation alive I'm the bad guy? With all the willing women out there - they are forcing these women and I'm the bad guy?
These fake arrests aren't just happening in Las Vegas either. http://reason.com/blog/2016/03/04/the-somali-sex-slave-ring-that-wasnt Innocent people were also arrested in Nashville and Minneapolis. A cop was caught finally pimping women in New York http://nypost.com/2016/02/02/nypd-cop-ran-tri-state-prostitution-ring-officials-say/ Kids were being trafficked right out of the trafficking safe house in Ohio. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/failures-in-handling-unaccompanied-migrant-minors-have-led-to-trafficking/2016/01/26/c47de164-c138-11e5-9443-7074c3645405_story.html
When I was setting up the appointment to go speak to the Pasadena Chief who is having his station audited at the time http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/government-and-politics/20160417/pasadena-police-need-an-independent-auditor-plus-civilian-oversight-report-says I had Meg Munoz, who runs Abeni, who is part of the OC Human Trafficking Task Force, AND the leader for SWOP in Walnut, California, going online and telling people I was "stalking and threatening her". I DIDN'T KNOW THE WOMAN! http://www.swopusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Honolulu-Sign-On.pdf But I have screen shots of her asking people if they knew where I lived so she could "file stalking charges against me and have me arrested". Since Chief Sanchez lives in Orange County and at the same time he's asking me to "come in and speak to him" I've got her trying to find out where I live so she can have me hauled off on a stalking charge? Didn't sound good to me.
I pointed out to Meg and everyone else there was no way she'd make a stalking charge stick as I didn't know her, wasn't threatening her, and wasn't even talking to her. Then she switched up to threatening to have me carted off on a 5150 charge. Why? Don't know as I don't know her. But I found the timing a little too weird and backed off going into the Pasadena station in person to speak to Chief Sanchez. I offered to speak to him via email about the case and he handed me off to a deputy. I asked the deputy if he wanted to speak about it by email and never got an answer.
Now let me ask you something - how am I supposed to get women away from this type of trafficking when we're dealing not only with police officers, but also when the people I'm calling for help are refusing my calls in fear of "losing their funding" or "harming their reputation by speaking to Jody"?
Welcome to the world of modern sex trafficking and the challenges of helping these victims. I think you understand now why there's a need for a hotline like ours where the callers call who aren't going to identify as "trafficking victims" nor be able to call the police on their traffickers in order to get help from victim services, nor can they get help from the local trafficking task forces. Now you might also understand why a SWOP member would step up in Seattle and claim "no those women weren't coerced". If Meg in SWOP is also part of the trafficking task force where this kind of corruption is going on - it's not a big leap to think they might have someone step up and do that to deflect any investigations into further trafficking victims who might be on that website. Or looking into who those traffickers might be.
But the truth always comes out in the wash and sooner or later the authorities are going to have to look into how these cases are connected. Not only how they're connected but why I've been saying the system that was set up by people who don't understand how the modern American sex industry, and thus the trafficking, operates. Which is as long as the funding is coming all from the same source - then the traffickers can always find a way in. This is why it's absolutely essential to have our program as a 12 step program, and thus one who doesn't receive federal funding, involved within the very structure of the trafficking programs. It's also why our hotline who is simply set up for ANYONE who wants help to exit the industry can call - even if they aren't identifying as "trafficking victims" and can't go to the police for help for obvious reasons.
It's also why people are now talking about a law to protect corrupt officials from being prosecuted. http://www.mintpressnews.com/lawmakers-trying-pass-bill-exempting-politicians-arrest-prosecution-corruption/201937/ The truth coming out seems to have a lot of people running for cover.
If you want to stop modern day sex trafficking - then you have to put our program back where it was before money got involved when the Trafficking Act of 2000 passed. Ever since the money grabbing started - we've been pushed right out of the arena. If these cases, along with those of Holtzclaw, don't show you why we need to be put back in there to help these men and women - then you're not listening. This is also why they've taken over sex industry blogs such as "Tits and Sass" and are doing everything in their power to make victims think they have no way out.
Well they do. Call www.sexworkersanonymous.com if you need help.
I came out of the meeting to find my car wouldn't start. A handsome young man offered to help me start the car who had been at the meeting. I allowed him to and he got it started. I later learned he had gone out during the meeting to rig the car to fail in order to get to know me. He then said he'd come by and finish looking at it at my house the next day and offered to follow me home to make sure I got home okay. How caring!
My mother went into surgery a few days later and didn't wake up for ten days. My husband had just left town and wasn't coming home. I was still recovering from a stroke and not working. Without my husband's income, I couldn't pay the rent on my apartment. The doctors told me either I had to move in with hr to care for her or my mom would have to go into a nursing home for full-time care. I had my daughter to get to school and my mother's care to deal with and now I was facing having to move with no money and being in a lot of pain. This young man stepped up to help me get my kid to school, deal with the doctors, pack my apartment, and just seemed like a blessing to me at first. He had told me he had a girlfriend when we met and I was much older than him so I didn't think it was sexual or even romantic. I was 42 years old and he was only 18 years old so it didn't cross my mind he was being anything other than a fellow addict in NA trying to be of service.
He then told me he'd broken up with the girlfriend and was interested in me. For months I put him off - but then after a medical emergency where I almost died I broke and threw myself into what I thought was a midlife crisis affair with a younger man. Only he wouldn't stop seeing me no matter how many times I tried to break it off. After sleeping together for some months, he started introducing me to his friends. They were cops, sheriff's, marshall's, private investigators, etc., and I was impressed with the quality of his friends being such "reputable" people. He was taking me to BBQ's, car races, and other events where he was getting me introduced to his "friends".
Within a year, he was talking to me about moving in together. He was taking me apartment hunting, and even introduced me to his father explaining that we were going to be living together. I had no reason to think this was anything other than a "real" relationship. As the date came for us to move into an apartment we'd found he started telling me that his "friends" were more than just involved in law enforcement. To show me what he meant, he took me over to one woman's house who was supposedly a retired guard at Clark County jail. The house was a B&D house right out of "50 Shades of Grey". He explained to me by keeping everything about B&D then no one was involved in "prostitution" and therefore no one was getting arrested.
I asked him why he was showing me this when he knew I was also running Sex Workers Anonymous and his answer was simple - your husband has left, your mother is about to die, and you aren't physically up to returning to work at a 9 to 5 job. He knew how much money I'd made when I was in the sex industry and his friends needed someone to help with the management end of their operation. When I asked why he needed me to help this woman run one "house" he explained there was much more than a "house" involved - but a whole network of operations they were all involved in spanning from the borders of Mexico in California clear to a spot in Kentucky. Seems the officers would transport the drugs, guns, stolen items, along with the women even in their work cars so if stopped then they'd say it was "evidence" they were transporting. The women were just "inmates being transported". That by working in relays they were covering most of the USA this way.
I told him I'd quit the business back in 1985 and I had no idea why he was even thinking I'd be interested in being a part of this. This is when he revealed he was a Romanian gypsy, and that both he, along with members of his family, were involved in this operation and if we were going to get married then I had to understand what his job was. I told him I thought he was a car mechanic who wanted to open his own shop. He then told me how he was a mechanic all right but not what I thought. Seems they would offer to park the trick's cars for them as a valet service, and then they were replacing authentic car parts on these luxury cars with cheap knock-offs which would often break down days later. Then they'd sell the parts as "refurbished" through the back door of Autozone. He showed me the car parts alone he was dealing in was bringing in $10,000 a week.
I told him I'd quit because I didn't want to ever go back to jail ever again. This is when he set about showing me how "fool proof" the operation was. Right before my eyes he showed me records of an inmate in the Las Vegas jail which was there one minute, and gone the next. That's how much control over the system these guys had he told me assuring me that "with the chief of police, the prosecutor, and a couple of politicians in their pocket" I wouldn't have to worry about being arrested if I decided to join him in this operation.
I allowed him to show me how everything was set up and took mental notes. Then I created a file outlining the whole operation and stupidly took the file to the Chief of Police in Las Vegas at the time, Chief Gillispie. The next morning I had a knock on the door. One of the women in the operation who was pregnant was there. I asked what happened and she told me she'd been put out on the street at 2:00 a.m. when they came in and cleaned everything out - the women, the drugs, the furniture, everything. She had just been put out on the street because she was pregnant and she said they didn't want to transport her anywhere in her condition. She had no money, no clothes, no family, and nowhere to go. I went about getting her settled into a motel and then went to see what had happened. Everything down to the woodwork had been cleared out and I could even smell the bleach from the cleaning.
I contacted a reporter and asked him to get involved. He arranged a "ride along" with the Las Vegas police on the weekend I told him there would be a drop. The one operation that was left was the Asian's in a private house. I couldn't get to the women in a private house and they were only seeing "johns" who came in from the airport from China speaking Mandarin, This prevented us from getting help to them to get them out. The police had told me there was no way to get an undercover agent in the operation because they "didn't have anyone who spoke Mandarin". I had been offered a job as director of ATLAS that year and thought I was about to take the job.
Only I opened the paper to see Terri Miller, a school teacher from Pahrump, had been given my job instead. No one had told me and the man who had offered me the job, Adam Freer, was no longer working with the Salvation Army. I told Terri about the whole operation going on and what we were trying to shut down and expose and she looked at me like I was insane. I told her she'd soon "see for herself I wasn't crazy" and waited for the day to come.
Sure enough, my phone rang. Terri told me 24 women, and bags of drugs, had just been found in a private home and the victims had been taken to the Salvation Army. She asked me to go with her to help her interview the women. When we arrived 20 minutes later - we were told the women had been "sent home". I was told no file had been taken on who the women were, they refused to give me an address, and also refused to let me speak to any reporters in this matter. This was "Operation Dollhouse" in 2007. http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SAN-MATEO-COUNTY-Two-lawmen-caught-in-raid-of-2563465.php Note Greg Munks was also a member of the trafficking task force in San Mateo. I had told the authorities whoever was making the drop that day for this operation would be coming from San Mateo. I was again patted on the head like I was crazy and blown off by everyone involved in this case I spoke to.
Rick Rizzolo had been drugging customers at the Crazy Horse, then padding their credit card bills. He'd send them home in taxi's he was in control of through a friend so no one wondered why all these zonked out people were being poured into a cab. When they realized they'd been ripped off - they'd call the club where they'd be threatened with exposure to their boss or wife how the charge happened. Sometimes photos were taken while they were knocked out with the dancers who were told to go along with the program. When they would go to the police - they were then threatened with drug possession or being under the influence charges if they pressed. That and some publicity in the local paper their wife, boss and clients would see. http://canadafreepress.com/article/rick-rizzolos-first-week-out-of-prison The dancers would sometimes run over to Buffalo Bill's school to escape where his wrestlers would protect them until we could arrange transportation out of state for them. The day after Rick was released from prison a death threat was left on Jim's car. He was found to have GHB in his system in a report that was being hidden by the coroner. http://www.americanmafia.com/inside_vegas/7-7-08_Inside_Vegas.html Shubert was the Las Vegas prosecutor at this time. http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/crime-courts/schubert-former-prosecutor-convicted-drug-charges-found-dead-home He was found dead in 2013.
We had been dealing with Kemp Shiffer for a long time. But he was operating "within the law" because he was bringing women in from California to work at a legal brothel. He would get them a work permit to work as a waitress in the restaurant of the legal brothel at 16 years of age where sex is legal in Nevada at 16 years old. He finally crossed the line however and got TWO YEARS for over 12 years of turning women out into prostitution. http://goingconcern.com/2011/8/former-irs-investigator-cum-accounting-professor-claims-he-took-money-from-18-year-old-prostitute-to-protect-her-denies-pimp-status Sure it was "legal" when they started. But if they got sick, got arrested, developed a drug problem - out they went from the legal brothel. Then with a prostitution license on their record, maybe being 17 or 18 years old - then what? To the streets is where they went. They were why I helped Sharnel set up a program in northern Nevada instead of southern Nevada. The teenage rejects and cast-offs from the brothels were all winding up in Reno, Lake Tahoe, Carson City, etc. Her program started in 2010 http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/ex-prostitutes-walk-tough-road-economic-freedom-amid-recession It was shut down when she was framed for a felony and sent to prison for five years on a first offense.
I was getting calls from victims of Chris Butler's operation out of California also. It was clear this was part of the same operation. Chris had been a cop for 20 years, and upon retiring became a private investigator who had even been on the Dr. Phil show. He also opened up massage parlors where he sold drugs through them given him by active duty narcotics officers. You can read about his arrest here in 2012. http://patch.com/california/sanramon/private-investigator-christopher-butler-pleads-guilty0df4c86437 Try getting women away from a cop slash best in the country private investigator and you have an idea how hard our job was to help the women who called our hotline.
Now could these women call the National Trafficking Hotline? No. Guess where they would have been referred to if they had? You got it - the local trafficking task force! So they called us and we had to do what we could do while having cops running around telling anyone who would listen we were absolutely "nuts". That or threaten they'd lose their funding, or they're tarnish their reputation by "associating with a bunch of ex-hookers" or 100 other things they could come up with to make sure no one took our phone calls to help THEIR VICTIMS.
In 2014, Officer Armendariz, was found dead in his home before he could testify at a corruption hearing. He was an officer on the local trafficking task force. http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/a-deputys-death-opens-the-door-onto-a-world-corruption-in-sheriff-joes-mcso-6462478
In the corruption case of Paul Tanaka, http://www.dailynews.com/government-and-politics/20150819/former-undersheriff-paul-tanaka-says-corruption-charges-should-be-dropped-codefendant-pleads-guilty the only officer who has been charged so far is Juan Lopez. Juan says he believes this is because he ran against Greg Munks for office. Remember that name? The man who was Chief over Paul was Lee Baca. He's now stepped down because of corruption charges in 2014. http://www.dailynews.com/government-and-politics/20140107/los-angeles-county-sheriff-lee-baca-steps-down
Chief Gillispie stepped down in Las Vegas in 2012 in a corruption case involving 15 other officers. https://nevadastatepersonnelwatch.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/fifteen-members-of-las-vegas-sheriff-douglas-gillespies-organization-have-been-served-with-a-federal-complaint/
In 2014, a constable was caught checking into files on porn performers. http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/constable-shred-investigation-porn-star-searches We don't know the names of who he was looking for, but I know we were getting women out of the sex industry away from their traffickers who wore uniforms and they weren't too happy about it.
In 2013, I got a phone call from woman who resides in Pasadena. She was telling me after being trafficked for 40 years, she told her traffickers she wanted to retire. Then she says she was drug out of her home and slapped with two fake prostitution cases. Further being told if she didn't get back to work she'd be hit with a third charge and then deported. They told her they knew someone on Homeland Security who would see to it she was deported, and then the authorities back in China would receive a photo of her taken while she was drugged that would net her the death penalty. They further told her they knew people in the Chinese government who would see to it she was executed in shame. We hired her an attorney who then ordered the booking tapes of her arrest to see if what she told us was true. He then was threatened by an officer and an attorney he reported to us.
I'd like introduce you to Jooloon David Lee, a Homeland Security officer who lives in Las Vegas, and was found guilty of bribery in Los Angeles. http://mynewsla.com/crime/2015/12/18/ex-la-agent-for-ice-admits-taking-bribes-in-sex-slave-case/ Mr. Lee was also falsely accusing a family of being the traffickers to keep up appearances he was doing his job, while using his office to protect the people he was not only taking bribes from, but assisting in trafficking of the women. http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/las-vegas-restaurateur-says-former-fed-manufactured-criminal-case-against-him Notice he was also connected to Immigration - https://dockets.justia.com/docket/alaska/akdce/3:2008cv00283/11419 Further note this man he was hassling, and putting an ankle bracelet on his wife to keep track of where they were called Lee's boss who told him there was "nothing he could do" about the situation. WOW.
In 2013, nine massage parlors were shut down. One of the pimps was named Zhang. Zhang by the way owns property in Pasadena, California, and is related to the woman who called me for help. http://cjonline.com/news/business/2014-04-07/woman-involved-sex-trafficking-wichita-massage-parlor-gets-probation The women in this parlor had been tricked into coming here from China. The arresting officer spent from 2009 until 2013 trying to get these arrests to stick. Seems when he was a cop he got too much interference from other cops. So he waited until he retired and went to work for the zoning department to get these arrests and free those women. Both he and the judge received death threats so the court didn't allow them to have bail during the trial.
Note these arrests in 2015 of a hotel owner who was arrested in China who was also a member of the People's Congress, or Chinese government. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11636148/Hotel-king-among-47-on-trial-over-Chinese-towns-sex-trade.html Check out the number of massage parlors and escort services this guy owned there. A man who regularly entertained people from America in his five star hotel.
Giving her every reason to believe these people would carry out their threats to her if she didn't go "back to work". The attorney who threatened our attorney then threatened me with a stalking charge if I spoke to her again. He then lied to her and claimed she didn't need my help as he'd expunged her criminal record for her. Only he didn't. When I went to show her that her criminal record was still showing up - I then got a call from a phone number coming from the Pasadena police department from an officer who threatened me again with a stalking charge if I spoke to her again. http://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-c1-prostitute-squad-20131002-dto-htmlstory.html When I asked if he wanted to hear why she was calling me for help he just threatened me again and got off the line. I recorded the threat. I also have the copies of her fake police reports that are charges signed by a judge.
So I think you can see why I got concerned when I read about another ex-officer out of Orange County going out to prostitutes "doing outreach" named "Kevin Brown". Note Kevin Brown had retired from the Orange County police force. http://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-c1-prostitute-squad-20131002-dto-htmlstory.html So he had to have known Mike Corona http://www.ocregister.com/articles/-661698--.html as well as Sheriff Don Haidi. http://www.ocweekly.com/news/lets-play-where-are-they-now-haidl-gang-rapists-6448633
When I got a call from Kevin's "assistant" telling me this story of how Kevin had been this cop for 20 years, and then upon retiring had "found God" and decided to go out and "help prostitutes" all I could think of was "he was watching this stuff going on for 20 years and didn't step up before?" I asked this guy what Kevin was doing when the victims he was supposedly rescuing turned out to have their traffickers be cops and he had no idea what I was talking about. I asked how he was bypassing the traffickers screening to get them up to a motel room - and he had no idea what I was talking about. But he was asking me to send prostitutes up to this guy's hotel room where they would then "go off to a compound somewhere in the desert"? Are you kidding me? I asked to meet this guy and see this ranch and of course never heard from the guy again until "8 Minutes" came out.
When I got the threat to stop speaking to this woman from a Pasadena cop, I contacted the Pasadena Chief to speak to him about it. I got no answer. I went over his head to the city manager. That prompted Chief Sanchez to start calling me three times a day to come in and speak to him in person. I asked him to get the records from the Wichita case so he'd know what I was talking about and I'd give him a week. During this time I wrote to the LAX security and Homeland Security. I told them about this case and that women were coming in from China to be trafficked. This was about June of 2013.
Notice the men in the recent Seattle arrests had been using women from China, but then "when things got hot" started bringing in women from Korea. http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/online-site-where-men-rated-prostitutes-is-shut-down-charges-to-be-filed/ Things weren't just hot here in the USA, but pretty hot over in China too from what I'm reading. Sheldon Adelson, the new owner of the Review Journal I don't think is too happy with me about these Chinese crackdowns - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-15/macau-sex-ring-bust-shows-china-s-expanding-crackdown-on-graft Might be why a reporter told me the Review Journal had put a "lifetime black list on my name and that of SWA no matter how many women die for not having our hotline number". What a wonderful person. These women are telling me they're being raped, beaten, terrorized, forced into selling drugs and performing prostitution, by cops - and when I go and help them get out of the situation alive I'm the bad guy? With all the willing women out there - they are forcing these women and I'm the bad guy?
These fake arrests aren't just happening in Las Vegas either. http://reason.com/blog/2016/03/04/the-somali-sex-slave-ring-that-wasnt Innocent people were also arrested in Nashville and Minneapolis. A cop was caught finally pimping women in New York http://nypost.com/2016/02/02/nypd-cop-ran-tri-state-prostitution-ring-officials-say/ Kids were being trafficked right out of the trafficking safe house in Ohio. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/failures-in-handling-unaccompanied-migrant-minors-have-led-to-trafficking/2016/01/26/c47de164-c138-11e5-9443-7074c3645405_story.html
When I was setting up the appointment to go speak to the Pasadena Chief who is having his station audited at the time http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/government-and-politics/20160417/pasadena-police-need-an-independent-auditor-plus-civilian-oversight-report-says I had Meg Munoz, who runs Abeni, who is part of the OC Human Trafficking Task Force, AND the leader for SWOP in Walnut, California, going online and telling people I was "stalking and threatening her". I DIDN'T KNOW THE WOMAN! http://www.swopusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Honolulu-Sign-On.pdf But I have screen shots of her asking people if they knew where I lived so she could "file stalking charges against me and have me arrested". Since Chief Sanchez lives in Orange County and at the same time he's asking me to "come in and speak to him" I've got her trying to find out where I live so she can have me hauled off on a stalking charge? Didn't sound good to me.
I pointed out to Meg and everyone else there was no way she'd make a stalking charge stick as I didn't know her, wasn't threatening her, and wasn't even talking to her. Then she switched up to threatening to have me carted off on a 5150 charge. Why? Don't know as I don't know her. But I found the timing a little too weird and backed off going into the Pasadena station in person to speak to Chief Sanchez. I offered to speak to him via email about the case and he handed me off to a deputy. I asked the deputy if he wanted to speak about it by email and never got an answer.
Now let me ask you something - how am I supposed to get women away from this type of trafficking when we're dealing not only with police officers, but also when the people I'm calling for help are refusing my calls in fear of "losing their funding" or "harming their reputation by speaking to Jody"?
Welcome to the world of modern sex trafficking and the challenges of helping these victims. I think you understand now why there's a need for a hotline like ours where the callers call who aren't going to identify as "trafficking victims" nor be able to call the police on their traffickers in order to get help from victim services, nor can they get help from the local trafficking task forces. Now you might also understand why a SWOP member would step up in Seattle and claim "no those women weren't coerced". If Meg in SWOP is also part of the trafficking task force where this kind of corruption is going on - it's not a big leap to think they might have someone step up and do that to deflect any investigations into further trafficking victims who might be on that website. Or looking into who those traffickers might be.
But the truth always comes out in the wash and sooner or later the authorities are going to have to look into how these cases are connected. Not only how they're connected but why I've been saying the system that was set up by people who don't understand how the modern American sex industry, and thus the trafficking, operates. Which is as long as the funding is coming all from the same source - then the traffickers can always find a way in. This is why it's absolutely essential to have our program as a 12 step program, and thus one who doesn't receive federal funding, involved within the very structure of the trafficking programs. It's also why our hotline who is simply set up for ANYONE who wants help to exit the industry can call - even if they aren't identifying as "trafficking victims" and can't go to the police for help for obvious reasons.
It's also why people are now talking about a law to protect corrupt officials from being prosecuted. http://www.mintpressnews.com/lawmakers-trying-pass-bill-exempting-politicians-arrest-prosecution-corruption/201937/ The truth coming out seems to have a lot of people running for cover.
If you want to stop modern day sex trafficking - then you have to put our program back where it was before money got involved when the Trafficking Act of 2000 passed. Ever since the money grabbing started - we've been pushed right out of the arena. If these cases, along with those of Holtzclaw, don't show you why we need to be put back in there to help these men and women - then you're not listening. This is also why they've taken over sex industry blogs such as "Tits and Sass" and are doing everything in their power to make victims think they have no way out.
Well they do. Call www.sexworkersanonymous.com if you need help.
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