A Massachusetts woman pleaded guilty on Friday to running a high-end brothel network in the greater Boston area and the suburbs of Washington, D.C., which catered to wealthy and influential clients, including politicians, corporate executives, lawyers, and military officers.
Han Lee appeared in Boston federal court and admitted to charges of conspiring to persuade, induce, and entice primarily Asian women to travel to Massachusetts and Virginia for prostitution, as well as money laundering.
She became the first of three individuals charged in November to admit guilt in connection with the sex ring, which operated out of apartment complexes in Cambridge and Watertown, Massachusetts, and Fairfax and Tysons, Virginia.
Lee, 42, faces up to 25 years in prison when sentenced on December 20. In her statement to U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick, Lee emphasized that while she operated the illegal prostitution business, she did not force any of the women to engage in sex work. “I simply want to emphasize that I did not control the women,” she said through a Korean interpreter.
Junmyung Lee, another defendant, is scheduled to plead guilty on October 30. The third defendant, James Lee, pleaded not guilty but is currently in negotiations to resolve his case, according to court records.
Prosecutors stated that clients paid between $350 and $600 per hour for sexual encounters with women advertised on two websites, which posed as photography services for nude models but were actually fronts for Han Lee’s prostitution operation, which had been in business since at least 2020.
Authorities estimate that the brothel network served hundreds of clients, including elected officials, pharmaceutical and technology executives, doctors, military officers, professors, lawyers, business executives, scientists, and accountants. However, no client has been publicly identified. After announcing the case, federal prosecutors referred potential state-level charges to local authorities in Massachusetts and Virginia for the alleged clients.
In December, Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy stated that authorities were pursuing state-level charges against 28 alleged brothel clients in Massachusetts. These cases have since been caught up in litigation before the state’s highest court, where debates are ongoing over whether the media can attend “show cause” hearings—normally closed to the public—in which a clerk-magistrate decides if there is probable cause to charge the men with misdemeanors.
In Virginia, prosecutors also received referrals but ultimately concluded that they lacked sufficient evidence to charge any clients under the state’s solicitation statute, according to Laura Birnbaum, a spokesperson for Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano.
