High-end Mass. brothel booker sentenced to prison, faces deportation
A 32-year-old man who made up to $8,000 a month 'booking' trafficked women for nearly 10,000 'dates' in a high-end brothel ring operating out of Cambridge and other East Coast cities was sentenced to a year in prison.
Junmyung Lee, a Korean national living in Dedham, was sentenced on Friday to one year in prison followed by one year of supervised release, by U.S. District Court Judge Julia Kobick.
Lee is subject to deportation after his sentence is completed, according to U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley. Lee was also ordered to pay $200,000 in forfeiture, the amount of money he made while he worked in the brothel ring.
Lee pleaded guilty in October to one count of conspiracy to persuade, induce, entice and coerce one or more individuals to travel in interstate or foreign commerce to engage in prostitution, and one count of money laundering conspiracy.
He was arrested and charged in the fall of 2023 alongside his accomplices —ring-leader Han Lee, 42, of Cambridge, and James Lee, 69, of Torrance, Calif. Han Lee was ordered to pay $5.4 million in forfeiture and sentenced to four years in prison in March. James Lee is scheduled to be sentenced on May 28.
Han Lee recruited Junmyung Lee as the brothel network 'booker' in late 2021, where he was responsible for vetting and communicating with sex buyers on two cellphones, which each held over 2,800 contacts. He also brought women to and from the airport as they were trafficked across states.
With the network itself generating over $5.6 million in revenue, Lee was paid between $6,000 and $8,000 a month to schedule around 9,450 'dates,' and made abut $200,000 in total, Foley said.
Lee would also collect and hide the cash proceeds with structured deposits in personal bank accounts and peer-to-peer payments, then use the money to pay for brothel location rent and utilities.
In a series of three public hearings last month, the names of 34 men who 'had been excessive of 400 text messages' with the brothel were revealed.
Most prominently, this included Cambridge City Councilor Paul Toner and Boston oncologist Dr. James Cusack Jr. Toner released a statement that said he would be 'forever sorry' for causing 'pain for the people I care about most,' and did not appear for his court hearing.
Appointments out of apartments in Cambridge, Watertown and eastern Virginia were set up by the accused sex buyers through text messages to a number on a website called bostontopten10.com, Cambridge Police Lt. Jarred Cabral said during the hearings.
The men used code words in their texts with the brothel owners, including 'GFE' for 'girlfriend experience' and 'BB' for 'bareback,' a slang term for sexual intercourse without protection, Cabral said.
The buyers often requested women by name, and their payments — which ranged from $250 for 30 minutes, to $350 for one hour and up to $840 for three hours — were called 'donations,' a usual term in the sex trade, Cabral said.
All of the men who were issued criminal complaints will be sent a summons to appear for arraignments at Cambridge District Court at a later date, according to Cambridge District Court Clerk Sharon Casey.
17 phones, nearly $50,000 taken from Han Lee, Cambridge brothel ringleader
Final hearings reveal more names of men implicated in Cambridge brothel
Cambridge city councilor communicated with 'brothel phone' 432 times, records show
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Family of the Boulder attack suspect is facing deportation. What happens next?
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President Donald Trump made the final call after the antisemitic attack, according to a White House official. The president said in a video posted Wednesday that new countries could be added to the travel ban as 'threats emerge around the world,' although Egypt, where the Soliman family is from, was not on the list. CNN's Priscilla Alvarez, Eric Levenson and Danya Gainor contributed to this report.
CNN
a day ago
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Family of the Boulder attack suspect is facing deportation. What happens next?
ImmigrationFacebookTweetLink Follow While Mohamed Soliman occupies a cell in Boulder County Jail in Colorado, hundreds of miles away, his wife and five children are also in detention, at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Soliman, the man charged with attempted murder following an antisemitic firebombing attack Sunday, told detectives that 'no one' knew about his attack plans and 'he never talked to his wife or family about it,' according to the affidavit for his arrest. But despite that admission from the Egyptian national, his family is now facing expedited removal from the United States. Soliman, 45, was born in Egypt but lived in Kuwait for 17 years. He first tried to come to the US in 2005 but was denied a visa, law enforcement sources told CNN. In 2022, he, his wife and their five children, entered the US as non-immigrant visitors and filed for asylum a month later in September 2022. 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At the time of their detention, their asylum application was still pending, and as a result, the Trump administration can't legally expedite their removal, the documents say. Soliman's family members have not been charged in the attack and on Wednesday evening, a federal judge ordered a halt to the deportation plans made for the family. 'Punishing individuals – including children as young as four-years-old – for the purported actions of their relatives is a feature of medieval justice systems or police state dictatorships, not democracies,' Lee said in a statement to CNN on Wednesday. The family's detention has experts questioning the legality of the family's detention and visa revocation, calling it unprecedented, even at a time where migrant detentions in courthouse hallways, college campuses, office buildings and during traffic stops across the country are increasing at an exponential rate under significant pressure from the Trump administration, which is tightening the reins on immigration. 'A permanent resident and a non-permanent resident, somebody on let's say an H-1B visa or some other type of temporary visa … has due process rights,' David Leopold, the former president and general counsel of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said at a news briefing with immigrant rights advocates in mid-March. 'Everybody is covered by the United States Constitution. Everybody's protected by the United States Constitution inside the United States.' However, immigrants' presence in the US is generally considered a 'privilege' rather than a right and can be revoked for certain reasons laid out in federal law, such as a serious crime. Once an asylum application is submitted, it's not uncommon for processing to take years before reaching a decision, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University told CNN, adding that Soliman and his family were within their rights to continue living in the US with a pending application. It is common however, for ICE to begin investigating one person and realize their family, friends or roommates may also have a questionable immigration status, García Hernández said. 'It's another matter entirely, to take the conduct of one individual and then ascribe responsibility on the family, on their family members by immediately detaining them and publicly saying that the goal is to deport them,' he said. Soliman's wife, who CNN is not naming at this time, was 'shocked' when she learned her husband had been arrested, her lawyers said in court records obtained by CNN. She said she and their five children should not be held responsible for her husband's crimes. 'Arrest first, investigate later, that is not the way that responsible law enforcement officers work,' Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told CNN. The burden of proof on ICE and DHS is to assess whether the family is a security risk or a threat to the community, Johnson said, and that should be done through meticulous investigation. During the attack, Soliman shouted 'Free Palestine,' according to the FBI and later told authorities that 'he wanted to kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead,' an affidavit said. 'He's confessed to a horrible crime, and he is obviously a threat to public safety,' Johnson said. 'Taking action against him makes all the sense in the world.' After his arrest, Soliman's wife brought an iPhone 14 she said belonged to him to the Colorado Springs police office, the affidavit said. 'I don't know where this allegation or belief that somehow this man's family is responsible or guilty of the crimes of their father or husband (comes from),' Johnson said. 'To arrest children without having done a thorough investigation, this feels much more like a publicity stunt than a law enforcement action.' As Soliman's wife and children wait for more information about their future, their attorneys are fighting to keep the family in the US. In his order, Judge Gordon P. Gallagher of the US District Court in Colorado wrote, 'Defendants SHALL NOT REMOVE,' Soliman's wife and her children from the District of Colorado or the United States 'unless or until this Court or the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit vacates this order.' Soliman appeared in state court Monday and is expected to appear in state court again Thursday and in federal court Friday. CNN has reached out to his attorney for comment. Aside from investigating Soliman for any potential mental health issues, investigators are reviewing a notebook he left behind that contains a manifesto written in English with certain lines written in Arabic, according to a law enforcement source, noting police recovered the notebook after Soliman told them where to find it. Investigators are also reviewing videos Soliman recorded of himself on his phone, both in English and Arabic, the source said. On the heels of Soliman's actions, the White House announced a new travel ban on citizens from a dozen nations as part of the first Trump administration's promise to clamp down on entries from certain countries and visa overstays — which have garnered renewed scrutiny in the attack's aftermath. President Donald Trump made the final call after the antisemitic attack, according to a White House official. The president said in a video posted Wednesday that new countries could be added to the travel ban as 'threats emerge around the world,' although Egypt, where the Soliman family is from, was not on the list. CNN's Priscilla Alvarez, Eric Levenson and Danya Gainor contributed to this report.
Yahoo
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Boulder attack suspect to appear in court as family remains in ICE detention
The suspect in the Boulder firebombing will appear in a Colorado court Thursday, as an attorney for his wife is calling for the family's release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. Mohamed Sabry Soliman, a 45-year-old Egyptian national who entered the country legally in 2022, has a hearing in Boulder County court at 3:30 p.m. local time (5:30 p.m. ET) in connection with the antisemitic attack Sunday at the Pearl Street pedestrian mall. Soliman is accused of using a "makeshift flamethrower" and Molotov cocktails on a group of people peacefully calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza. The attack injured at least 15 people, ranging in age from 25 to 88, and one dog, prosecutors said in an update Wednesday. Soliman faces state charges of attempted first-degree murder after deliberation, attempted first-degree murder with extreme indifference, first-degree assault, including against an at-risk victim older than 70, and possession of an incendiary device. Separately, Soliman was charged Monday with a federal hate crime. The White House on Tuesday announced that Soliman's wife and five children had been taken into ICE custody "for expedited removal." Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote on X that the department was investigating "to what extent" Soliman's family knew about the attack or supported it. A federal judge Wednesday issued an order preventing the deportation of the wife and children. They have not been charged in connection with the attack. Soliman entered the country on a B2 visa, typically issued to tourists, in August 2022. The following month, he filed for asylum with his family as dependents, according to the Department of Homeland Security and court documents. While his visa expired in February 2023, Soliman had not yet exhausted all legal options to stay in the U.S. An attorney for Soliman's wife, Hayam El Gamal, told NBC News that she and her children are at the Dilley family detention center in Texas. "There is no precedent in the history of the United States for the type of collective family-based punishment that the Trump administration is doling out on this family," the attorney, Eric Lee, said. 'It's extremely dangerous, and it's something that should concern every single person that's watching,' he added. "You can imagine the shock that they were in when they learned the charges that were being brought against their father or husband, and then suddenly to find themselves being whisked away in the dark of night, out of their home state of Colorado to a new place in a detention center, huddled together without really any idea about whether they were going to be sent to a country from which they had applied for the right to asylum," Lee continued. Lee said two of the five children are 4 years old, and the others are 8, 15 and 17. He said the government had mistakenly said that the oldest child is 18. He said he's sought habeas relief to protect the family from being removed, but hasn't had the opportunity to speak to them in depth, as calls were cut off twice after a few minutes on Wednesday. "One could only imagine what this family is going through," he said. "They've done absolutely nothing wrong." This article was originally published on
