Kansas City, Mo. – Two Chinese citizens have each been sentenced to five years in U.S. prison for their role in a large prostitution operation in Johnson County Kansas.
According to court documents, dozens of women were recruited from China to work under what are described as slave labor conditions at massage parlors in Overland Park and Olathe. Thirty seven year old Zhong Yan Liu and 23 year old Cheng Tang were ordered to prison.
The men apologized in Kansas City Missouri Federal District Court.
Prosecutors described Asian women being recruited, brought through Missouri enroute to Kansas to perform sex acts with customers for more than 12 hours a day. When charges were filed in 2007, then-U.S. Attorney John Wood said the modern-day form of slavery reaches from the other side of the globe to the suburban Midwest.
The money laundering charge, to which the men pleaded guilty, involved wiring more than $500 thousand in proceeds from unlawful activity from the United States to China. The purported ringleader of the operation was charged with illegally taking and using her female workers' passports and identification