BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts woman accused of operating a high-end brothel network with wealthy and prominent clients in that state and the Washington, D.C., suburbs that generated millions of dollars in revenue was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison.
Han Lee and two others were indicted last year on one count of conspiracy to persuade, entice, and coerce one or more individuals to travel in interstate or foreign commerce to engage in prostitution and one count of money laundering, according to prosecutors. The operation, according to court documents, generated millions of dollars a year, and customers paid hundreds of dollars an hour for services.
Junmyung Lee of Dedham, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty in October and is set to be sentenced next month. James Lee of Torrance, California, accused of renting the apartments in the operation, pleaded guilty last month to his involvement in the scheme as well as fraudulently obtaining nearly $600,000 in pandemic relief funds. He is set to be sentenced next month.
“You ran a highly profitable business that involved recruiting women across the country to come to Massachusetts and Virginia to sell their bodies for sex,” said U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick. “The government argues and I agree this is not a victimless crime."
Prosecutors had asked that Han Lee, 42, who pleaded guilty in September, be sentenced to six years imprisonment and three years of supervised released for running “one of the most successful prostitution networks” on the East Coast. They estimate that nearly 10,000 commercial sex dates occurred in her brothels, according to court records, and that Lee made more than $5 million dollars over more than four years.
Lee's federal public defender, Scott Lauer, had pleaded for leniency, saying in court documents that Lee grew up poor in South Korea and had a father who drank heavily and was abusive. After arriving in the United States, she became a sex worker in California, Las Vegas and New York before settling in Massachusetts and continuing to work in the trade.
After a brothel was raided, Han Lee saw the opportunity to set up the network. The defense contended none of the sex workers were forced to do the job and that they kept up to 70% of the revenues. Her clients were vetted to reduce the dangers and she didn't withhold travel documents from the workers.
“While cases involving prostitution often involve some degree of force or coercion exerted against the women involved, this case does not,” Lauer wrote. “There is a world of difference between Ms. Lee — a sex worker herself — and a pimp (or madam) who enriches themselves at the expense of those performing the work."
Assistant United States Attorney Lindsey Weinstein acknowedged that Lee didn't treat her workers badly but that didn't take away from the fact she recruited them into a world where they spent long days being paid for sex in strange cities, rarely leaving the apartment.
“You don't get credit for not threatening and abusing other women,” she said. “This was a business, a lifestyle she was personally involved in. The fact she decided to further harm onto others is pretty significant here.”
Lee, dressed in an orange jumpsuit and speaking through an interpreter, apologized to the court and said she was only trying to support the women, some who were fleeing domestic violence or lacked an education.
“I heard all their stories and tried to help them," she said.
Authorities said the sex ring in Massachusetts and northern Virginia catered to politicians, company executives, military officers, lawyers, professors and other well-connected clients.
Nearly 30 of the buyers are appearing court this month in Cambridge, after the state's highest court ruled last year that the hearings should be public. The first group of buyers appeared in court last week, and a second group is set to appear Friday.
The women who worked in the brothels were not identified or criminally charged and were considered victims, prosecutors said.
Han Lee maintained the operation from 2020 to November 2023.
The brothel operation used websites that falsely claimed to advertise nude models for professional photography, prosecutors alleged. The operators rented high-end apartments to use as brothels in Watertown and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Tysons and Fairfax, Virginia, prosecutors said. Brothels were maintained at four locations in Massachusetts and two in Virginia.
Each website described a verification process that interested sex buyers undertook to be eligible for appointment bookings, including requiring clients to complete a form providing their full names, email addresses, phone numbers, employers and references if they had one, authorities said.
FILE - Planters rest near an entrance to apartments, in Watertown, Mass., Monday, Nov. 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powellsaid Sunday the Department of Justice has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in President Donald Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he's repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project Trump has criticized as excessive.
Here's the latest:
Stocks are falling on Wall Street after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the Department of Justice had served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony about the Fed’s building renovations.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3% in early trading Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 384 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.2%.
Powell characterized the threat of criminal charges as pretexts to undermine the Fed’s independence in setting interest rates, its main tool for fighting inflation. The threat is the latest escalation in President Trump’s feud with the Fed.
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She says she had “a very good conversation” with Trump on Monday morning about topics including “security with respect to our sovereignties.”
Last week, Sheinbaum had said she was seeking a conversation with Trump or U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the U.S. president made comments in an interview that he was ready to confront drug cartels on the ground and repeated the accusation that cartels were running Mexico.
Trump’s offers of using U.S. forces against Mexican cartels took on a new weight after the Trump administration deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Sheinbaum was expected to share more about their conversation later Monday.
A leader of the Canadian government is visiting China this week for the first time in nearly a decade, a bid to rebuild his country’s fractured relations with the world’s second-largest economy — and reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States, its neighbor and until recently one of its most supportive and unswerving allies.
The push by Prime Minster Mark Carney, who arrives Wednesday, is part of a major rethink as ties sour with the United States — the world’s No. 1 economy and long the largest trading partner for Canada by far.
Carney aims to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports in the next decade in the face of President Trump’s tariffs and the American leader’s musing that Canada could become “the 51st state.”
▶ Read more about relations between Canada and China
The comment by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson came in response to a question at a regular daily briefing. President Trump has said he would like to make a deal to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous region of NATO ally Denmark, to prevent Russia or China from taking it over.
Tensions have grown between Washington, Denmark and Greenland this month as Trump and his administration push the issue and the White House considers a range of options, including military force, to acquire the vast Arctic island.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that an American takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO.
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Trump said Sunday that he is “inclined” to keep ExxonMobil out of Venezuela after its top executive was skeptical about oil investment efforts in the country after the toppling of former President Nicolás Maduro.
“I didn’t like Exxon’s response,” Trump said to reporters on Air Force One as he departed West Palm Beach, Florida. “They’re playing too cute.”
During a meeting Friday with oil executives, Trump tried to assuage the concerns of the companies and said they would be dealing directly with the U.S., rather than the Venezuelan government.
Some, however, weren’t convinced.
“If we look at the commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today it’s uninvestable,” said Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil company.
An ExxonMobil spokesperson did not immediately respond Sunday to a request for comment.
▶ Read more about Trump’s comments on ExxonMobil
Trump’s motorcade took a different route than usual to the airport as he was departing Florida on Sunday due to a “suspicious object,” according to the White House.
The object, which the White House did not describe, was discovered during security sweeps in advance of Trump’s arrival at Palm Beach International Airport.
“A further investigation was warranted and the presidential motorcade route was adjusted accordingly,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Sunday.
The president, when asked about the package by reporters, said, “I know nothing about it.”
Anthony Guglielmi, the spokesman for U.S. Secret Service, said the secondary route was taken just as a precaution and that “that is standard protocol.”
▶ Read more about the “suspicious object”
Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown on protesters, a move coming as activists said Monday the death toll in the nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 544.
Iran had no direct reaction to Trump’s comments, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — traveled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defense.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking to foreign diplomats in Tehran, insisted “the situation has come under total control” in fiery remarks that blamed Israel and the U.S. for the violence, without offering evidence.
▶ Read more about the possible negotiations and follow live updates
Fed Chair Powell said Sunday the DOJ has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he has repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project that Trump has criticized as excessive.
Powell on Sunday cast off what has up to this point been a restrained approach to Trump’s criticisms and personal insults, which he has mostly ignored. Instead, Powell issued a video statement in which he bluntly characterized the threat of criminal charges as simple “pretexts” to undermine the Fed’s independence when it comes to setting interest rates.
▶ Read more about the subpoenas
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters while in flight on Air Force One to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
President Donald Trump waves after arriving on Air Force One from Florida, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
