Hot Springs locals react to human trafficking investigation at massage business
People who live and work in Hot Springs, like Hannah and Cole Carey, said they can't believe something like this was happening in their city.
'It's really just shocking to me that it's so close to home,' Hannah Carey said.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin announces organized retail crime bust & human trafficking investigation
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said a May 22 raid on AI Massage on Central Avenue stemmed from information gathered during previous investigations into other massage parlors busted for illicit sexual activity.
According to Griffin, three Chinese nationals were identified as victims and are now receiving support services. One woman told investigators she responded to an online job ad in China and did not know she would be doing sex work.
'It kind of hits you hard, just makes you feel bad for them, thinking about what else they went through,' Cole Carey said.
Griffin said investigators uncovered evidence pointing to sexual activity.
'Illicit sexual activity, prostitution going on in these massage parlors. We not only talked to the victims to confirm it, there were about 100 condoms there, which normally would not be at a spa,' Griffin said, 'There was what we believe to be a home remedy used to treat sexually transmitted infections, also implying that sexual activity is going on.'
Authorities also recovered $22,000 in American cash along with some foreign currency. Griffin said no arrests have been made yet because the individuals believed to be running the operation were not there during the raid. However, he said law enforcement is following every lead.
'I'm grateful to law enforcement who have been on top of this and trying to get to the bottom of it,' said Tina Haney, another Hot Springs local. 'It's disappointing to have this going on right under our noses and not even realize it.'
Arkansas Attorney General announces grant to combat human trafficking in Arkansas
The massage parlor under investigation is open today. KARK 4 News went there to ask for a comment, but the people there said their boss wasn't there and declined to comment.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Chicago Tribune
18 minutes ago
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In 1874, during the brief era of Reconstruction, white people staged a racist uprising in New Orleans. Angered by the presence of African Americans in law enforcement and other government posts, members of the Crescent City White League stormed the local customs house and killed 11 police officers. Two years later, a contested presidential election led to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the South and the end of Reconstruction. In 1891, New Orleans erected a memorial to White League members who died in the 1874 riot. And in 1932, the city affixed a plaque to the memorial stating that the 1876 election 'recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state.' But you can't see the memorial — or its plaque — in New Orleans any longer. It was taken down in 2017, following years of protest by civil rights advocates. 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Newsweek
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How Trump Used a Remote Island Base To Warn Iran
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Satellite imagery this week captured the drawdown of U.S. forces at the remote Diego Garcia naval base in the Indian Ocean, after the joint British-American military facility had played a central role in the Pentagon's campaign of signals and deception in the lead-up to U.S. airstrikes against Iran. In late March, analysts studying open-source imagery—like those taken by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellites—began noticing an increase in U.S. Air Force deployments to the coral atoll amid tensions in the Middle East. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth later revealed that they were part of U.S. efforts to deter Iran and its proxies. 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A new ESA photograph captured on Monday, rendered in false color to avoid dense clouds, showed the end of Diego Garcia's temporary role as a tool for military signaling. Empty parking aprons were seen where U.S. jet fighters and strategic bombers once stood as clear warnings to Tehran. At its height in May, the surge in forces to the Indian Ocean base included F-15 fighter aircraft, B‑2 and B‑52 bombers, KC‑135 tankers and C‑17 military transport planes, according to publicly available analysis at the time, which preceded the two-week campaign of Israeli airstrikes on Iran's military infrastructure and Iranian ballistic attacks on Israeli territory. Drag slider compare photos "We probably ensured that Diego Garcia was ready, but ultimately, the president decided on a different plan that was really focused on trying to preserve security," retired U.S. Army General Joseph Votel, the former head of the U.S. Central Command and now a researcher at the Middle East Institute, told Newsweek. In a mission relying on deception, aerial refueling and near-total radio silence to strike Iran's nuclear sites, the B-2s from Whiteman Air Force Base flew a round-trip bombing sortie that lasted more than 30 hours, the Pentagon later said. A separate group of suspected decoy aircraft were routed to Guam and successfully mislead observers about U.S. intensions. "These decoys were probably to get Iran to refocus their attention on threats coming from Diego Garcia rather than from the U.S.," Shahin Berenji, an assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College, told Newsweek. Operation assessments indicated that Iran's nuclear facilities were damaged and its enrichment program likely delayed by several months to years. However, the threat from Iran is not over, the subject-matter experts said, stressing that the visible reduction of U.S. forces at Diego Garcia did not necessarily reflect a shift in priorities in the CENTCOM area. What People Are Saying U.S. Army General (retired) Joseph Votel, former CENTCOM commander and current research fellow at the Middle East Institute, told Newsweek: "I think that the threat of Iran will continue to drive U.S. interests and U.S. military strategy in the region for the foreseeable future. [Iran's enrichment capability] certainly has been delayed…but it's not completely destroyed, and Iran has not taken off on a different path. So I think we have to continue to be concerned about that." Shahin Berenji, assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College's Strategy and Policy Department, told Newsweek: "I would argue that given what happened in this past crisis, just because the U.S. doesn't have prepositioned forces in Diego Garcia, it doesn't mean it can't strike Iran with strategic bombers from the homeland." Berenji said his views were his own and did not represent those of the college. What Happens Next Diego Garcia will remain a key strategic hub for the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, even if it isn't used in every operation.
