An amended indictment was filed against a businesswoman and her boyfriend who were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on charges they recruited three women from China as waitresses and a massage therapist, but forced them to work as prostitutes at their karaoke bar in Garapan.<\/p>\n
Zheng Ming Yan, alias Li-Na, and Liu Chang Da, were indicted with conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, foreign transportation for prostitution and foreign transportation of persons in execution of fraud scheme; three counts of sex trafficking; two counts of foreign transportation for prostitution; two counts of foreign transportation of persons in execution of fraud scheme; and two counts of forfeiture allegation.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Alex R. Munson unsealed the superseding indictment last Wednesday following the request of the U.S. government.<\/p>\n
Zheng and Liu pleaded not guilty to the charges.<\/p>\n
Court records show that FBI arrested Liu on Dec. 29, 2005. Zheng was arrested by the FBI in September 2005.<\/p>\n
According to U.S. Attorney Timothy Moran in court papers, Zheng managed and operated the Tea House as a commercial sex house although it was a nightclub.<\/p>\n
Moran said Zheng was the secretary and a shareholder of Greate Corp. or Great Corp., which owned the Tea House.<\/p>\n
Zheng was also the president and sold shareholder of Perfect Corp. that owned the Chan Ming Market.<\/p>\n
Zheng’s boyfriend, Liu, served as manager of Chan Ming Market.<\/p>\n
Moran said that beginning in August 2004, the defendants together with others fraudulently operated an illegal commercial sex at the Tea House.<\/p>\n
The defendants allegedly recruited three women from Dalian, China, on promises that they would be given high-paying jobs at legitimate businesses on Saipan.<\/p>\n
The recruited three women were asked to pay in excess of $5,000 each for travel costs and authorization to enter and work on Saipan, the prosecutor said.<\/p>\n
Upon arrival on the island, the women were compelled to work as prostitutes and paid only below the contracted wages, Moran said.<\/p>\n
Zheng allegedly collected the women’s earnings from prostitution. (Ferdie de la Torre)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An amended indictment was filed against a businesswoman and her boyfriend who were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on charges they recruited three women from China as waitresses and a massage therapist, but forced them to work as prostitutes at their karaoke bar in Garapan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}