A Utah man is suing after being implicated in a human trafficking ring for driving his wife to and from her job at Asian massage businesses in Utah County. Police raided the places in early 2021 and arrested Joseph Ferreri, his wife Juying Wang, and several other women associated with the businesses where Wang worked.
A police document justifying Ferreri’s arrest relies heavily on generalizations about Asian massage businesses and race-based stereotypes. It’s also peppered with misrepresentations—like describing Wang as a “girl” even though she’s in her 50s and two years older than Ferreri. “The local officer in charge of the ‘investigation'”—American Fork Police Officer Shawn Lott—”embellished, omitted, and made up facts to paint Joe Ferreri as an international sex trafficker,” Ferreri’s lawsuit against Lott and the city alleges, claiming that “the sole basis for targeting Joe was the race/ethnicity of his wife and her occupation.”
Ferreri’s situation isn’t some isolated incident. Police and federal agents frequently target Asian massage businesses for investigations and raids, garnering ample news coverage about “sex trafficking” rings when there’s little to support these claims and silence when the big talk about busting up traffickers doesn’t pan out.
In this case, all charges against Ferreri, Wang, and the other women were eventually dropped. But by then, the case had negatively impacted Ferreri’s life in multiple ways. His name and picture were published in news outlets that described him as part of a human trafficking ring. He and his wife were temporarily barred from seeing each other. He lost his job, and with it any chance of a pension he was more than halfway to qualifying for. The only work Ferreri could find following the arrest was a temp gig in a coal mine, his complaint says.
“Most, if not all, Asian massage businesses operate the same”
The investigation that kicked this all off started in September 2020, when American Fork police received an anonymous online tip about prostitution taking place at Sunflower Massage. The tipster told cops that masseuses would touch customers “inappropriately” and “if you do not complain she will continue and even make offers for more,” according to Lott’s Affidavits of Probable Cause for arresting Ferreri and Wang.
“Most, if not all, Asian massage businesses operate the same,” Lott asserts confidently in the affidavits.
The arrest documents are filled with generalizations like this. Lott claims that Asian women fall easily into human trafficking because “family honor” is so important to them and traffickers threaten to tell their families about the “voluntary prostitution” they’re engaged in. These women are often “forced to live in small closets or rooms within the massage business premise and given only minimal means for survival,” he writes. “It is not uncommon for trafficked girls to be dropped off and picked up by someone other than the business owner” in an attempt “to thwart law enforcement investigation.”
Note that none of this “evidence” involves actual acts uncovered at Sunflower Massage and its sister businesses. Rather, they are generalizations—supposedly based on Lott’s “training and experience.”
Lott writes that many applications for Asian massage businesses “have ownership names using out of state driver’s licenses and addresses, typically tied to the southern California area”—even though none of the women in this case had ties to southern California—and tries to make the mere use of Chinese names sound suspect, noting that “the names listed as owners on the [massage business] applications are often difficult to understand, as Chinese names start with the last name first.”
Lott also makes repeated reference to “girls” in the arrest documents, even though the females involved in this case were all adult women.
“Lott’s differential treatment of, and/or targeting of, ‘Asian’ or ‘Chinese’ subjects, permeates” the arrest documents, Ferreri’s complaint argues. This targeting was “patently unconstitutional” and “based on unsupported stereotypes and complaints about ‘Asian massage parlors’ in general, with no reference to the particular businesses at issue.”
Ferreri also alleges that the affidavit descriptions of his marriage were inaccurate, prejudicial, and/or incomplete in a way designed to arouse suspicion. For instance, the affidavit says, without any further explanation, that “Joseph has been known to travel for days at a time to Selina Utah,” even though Ferreri allegedly told police that his brother lived there and he would sometimes go spend weekends with him. Lott points out that Ferreri and Wang met “at a massage parlor where she provided him a sexual act in return for money,” even though this isn’t really relevant to the alleged criminal wrongdoing. And Lott suggests that “the marriage may not be legitimate,” even though “a short telephone call to a vital records office in Texas would have confirmed the marriage,” according to Ferreri’s complaint.
“Male customers [say] there are ‘happy endings'”
Joining forces with other local police departments, American Fork Police sent cops to quiz customers coming out of the massage businesses they were investigating. “On all of these stops the male customers have all acknowledge [sic] there are ‘happy endings’ offered to customers,” writes Lott in his affidavit for Ferreri’s arrest.
The police departments started sending undercover cops to get massages at Sunflower and associated massage businesses (Relax Wood and Small Rainbow, which had the same owner as Sunflower, and a place called Magic Massage). Masseuses at these business allegedly offered sexual extras to the undercover cops on multiple occasions. (The officers allegedly declined.) Police also staked out the businesses and followed the women to and from work.
They honed in on Ferreri after a “concerned citizen” told them that “an older white male” had “pick[ed] up a Chinese girl” from Relax Wood, per Lott’s description. The “girl” in question was Wang, who was born in 1964 and 56 years old at the time.
In February 2021, police raided the massage businesses and arrested Ferreri and five women, including Wang. Ferreri was booked on charges of aiding prostitution (a misdemeanor) and a pattern of unlawful activity (a felony). He would eventually be charged with human trafficking, money laundering, and aggravated exploitation of prostitution as well, according to his lawsuit.
Wang was charged with two counts of prostitution—based on alleged offers of sexual activity to undercover officers on two occasions—and with engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity.
(The “pattern of unlawful activity” charge—a felony—provides a good example of how cops get creative with charges to crack down harshly on sex workers. Prostitution is only a misdemeanor offense, but offering to engage in prostitution twice could be construed as a “pattern” and bring on a more severe charge.)
Lott requested that Wang and the other arrested women be held without bail. Yes, we’re looking at authorities trying to keep a woman locked up for who knows how long pre-trial because she may have dared to touch some body parts she wasn’t allowed to touch in the course of being paid to touch some body parts she was allowed to touch.
“Humiliation, stress, [and] untreated medical conditions”
The charges against Ferreri were dropped nine months later, a day before a scheduled hearing where cops would have had to present evidence for them in court. The charges against the other defendants were dropped in January 2022. There was no deluge of news coverage for either development, as there had been about the arrests.
Ferreri filed a complaint against Lott and American Fork last August and, earlier this month, Magistrate Judge Jared C. Bennett set a schedule for the case. (Various documents, discovery, and motions aren’t due until August through December of this year, so it could be quite a while yet before we see any resolution here.) He accuses the city and Lott of violating his rights to due process and equal protection, as well as disregarding and penalizing him for his request for a lawyer.
“Lott targeted Joe based solely on Joe’s association with a Chinese woman who worked at a licensed massage business,” Ferreri’s complaint posits. “Joe’s observed conduct was no different from other spouses who share one car.”
Ferreri seeks a declaration that his rights were violated, along with “a judgment awarding [him] interest on economic losses to the extent permitted by law” plus compensation for “emotional distress and other personal injury” and for his litigation expenses.
Following his arrest, “friends saw him on the news. Strangers who recognized him in the small town where he lived gave him disgusted looks and humiliating distance,” states the complaint. “He was ostracized in the small town where he lived” and Wang and him temporarily separated because of “the strain of the prosecution.”
Ferreri was fired from his job with the Utah Department of Corrections, where he had “had accrued approximately 13 years toward a 20-year pension” and had not previously “been subject to discipline or any other indication of dissatisfaction with his job performance.” After the charges were dropped, Ferreri tried to get rehired by the Department of Corrections but could not. “After his termination and highly publicized accusations of being an international sex trafficker, the only job that Joe could get was at a coal mine through a temp agency,” his complaint states.
Without health insurance from his job, he incurred high medical bills when he subsequently suffered myriad medical issues, including a heart attack. He also had to”hire a lawyer to defend the charges and the government’s request that his assets be seized” and “to retain the services of an experienced civil rights attorney to vindicate his constitutional rights.” Ultimately, the arrest led to negative financial consequences as well as “humiliation, stress, [and] untreated medical conditions,” Ferreri alleges.
Qualified Immunity Strikes Again?
While investigations like the one that netted Ferreri may not be all that rare, it is relatively rare to see people fighting back. Most of the times when it occurs, it’s male customers or associates of the massage parlors—not the workers or managers or owners there—who do.
This isn’t a surprise: they are generally much better positioned to make a stink than immigrant sex workers who may fear deportation, face language barriers, be unclear about how the U.S. legal system works, etc. And the fact that women involved in these stings are so ill-positioned to fight back hints at why this sort of thing is allowed to continue happening, again and again.
Cops face little recourse, even when their cases totally fall apart and were based on little more than writing some sort of Asian sex-slave fanfic.
They’re also aided by things like the doctrine of qualified immunity, which gives police broad authority to get away with things done in the name of duty.
In a response filed in December, Lott and the city of American Fork invoked qualified immunity as part of their defense. They also denied all allegations against them and suggested that Ferreri’s “injuries or damages, if any, were caused by his own actions, conduct, or failures to act.”
Guilt by Association
Reading Ferreri’s complaint, I wondered if his team was selectively picking from the probable cause affidavit. Surely, there must have been more to it than Ferreri giving his wife and her colleague rides and some generalized hoo-ha about Asian women?
Not really. The whole thing uses a guilt-by-association approach: sometimes Asian massage businesses do bad things, and these were Asian massage businesses, so—checkmate!
In an affidavit related to one of the arrested women, there is mention of one “victim.” But there’s nothing linking her to Ferreri. Besides, evidence provided for her victimization is iffy—made especially so by the fact that all charges against all of the arrested women were dropped.
This is common with massage parlor investigations, raids, and arrests. Authorities justify their actions with generalized “facts” about Asian massage businesses or Asian culture—often relying on racist or xenophobic tropes and classist assumptions—and make vague nods to victims that we never hear about again. Things like living together, carpooling, or sleeping in a room at one’s business or place of employment get cast not as reasonable measures for people on a budget or new to this country but as clearly the work of a nefarious trafficking ring.
Officials say it’s all about helping the women who work at these places while simultaneously arresting the workers for things like prostitution or unlicensed massage and having police seize their assets. (See, for instance, the case in Florida involving Robert Kraft, the “sex trafficking ring” that Sen. Josh Hawley claimed to have broken up, or Homeland Security’s “Operation Asian Touch.”)
It’s the perfect storm of anti-immigrant sentiments, fear of China, and moral panic surrounding sex work and sex trafficking.
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