For the Reporter
Local law enforcement officials announced today the dismantling of a local branch of a national network of sex buyers and traffickers.
The investigation resulted in the filing of criminal charges against over a dozen suspects in connection with the sexual exploitation of women who were being brought into the United States and then prostituted.
An investigation by the King County Sheriff’s Office, with the assistance of the Bellevue Police Department and support from the FBI and the King County Prosecutor’s Office, culminated in the arrests of 11 men earlier this week who were local members of the online network that used its resources to promote prostitution and facilitate sexual exploitation.
Investigators took the unprecedented step of using a court order to seize the primary website used by the group to rate, discuss and promote the prostitution of the women. Investigators also shut down 12 Bellevue brothels associated with the alleged scheme and arrested four of the on-site managers.
In the spring of 2015, the King County Sheriff’s Office and the Bellevue Police Department began a joint investigation into the online sex trade and trafficking of prostituted persons in the greater Bellevue-Seattle area.
The investigation was initiated in response to a report by a trafficking victim, who described being brought to America from South Korea and coerced into prostitution to pay off a family debt. The investigation focused on how individuals and organizations use the internet and social media to build and perpetuate a market for prostituted Asian women in the Pacific Northwest.
King County Sheriff John Urquhart was joined today by Bellevue Police Chief Steve Mylett and King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg at a morning news conference to announce the arrests and the filing of unprecedented felony charges against a total of 13 suspects.
Three of the suspects charged, two men and one woman, were brothel owners. All of the defendants have been charged with promoting prostitution in the second degree.
Organizers of the network advanced the exploitation of prostituted individuals through a website called TheReviewBoard.net, where sex buyers offered graphic reviews of their “dates,” discussed how to access secret brothels and enthusiastically encouraged the members of the website to visit specific prostituted persons. The ReviewBoard.Net also allowed the posting of explicit advertisements for prostitution related activities and services.
The Review Board, known informally as TRB, had an estimated 18,000 to 20,000 members around the U.S., and the TRB’s vast community of sex buyers looked to the most prolific reviewers to access the underground world of illegal commercial sex, which advanced the commercial sex industry in the region.
Information shared on the site was used to exploit the foreign-born women, mostly from Korea, who were also being shuttled from one city to the next on a monthly basis.
Organizers of the network encouraged sex buyers to consistently visit the most desired prostituted persons advertised so that they would be kept in the Seattle area longer.
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