Couple charged with human trafficking, held on $500k bail each (Chris Villani, Boston Herald: January 12, 2017)

[Anthony D'Isidoro]

A husband and wife accused of running an Allston brothel are facing human trafficking charges were held on $500,000 bail each, an amount an attorney for one of the defendants says is a product of attention given to the web site backpage.com by the media and the state’s attorney general.

“The charges, the whole case is blown out of proportion,” attorney Carmine Lapore said after his client’s arraignment in Suffolk Superior Court. “It’s a knee-jerk reaction to what is widely considered a hot topic today and for these people to be held on outrageously high bail has no lawful basis.”

Lapore is representing Kim Chow, 69, who along with his wife, 53-year-old Yuet Chow, is charged with human trafficking, keeping a house of ill-fame, and deriving support from the earnings of a prostitute. The pair were arrested in September after a tipster noticed last May an unusual amount of activity at 6 Haskell Street in Allston — namely a steady stream of men entering and exiting the home seven days a week — triggering a month-long surveillance of the house by police, Assistant District Attorney Lynn Feigenbaum said.

During the course of the investigation, “numerous” men were stopped and questioned, Feigenbaum said.

“They had answered an ad on backpage.com for ‘Amy’s Asian Models’ and made an appointment with an Asian female,” Feigenbaum said, adding the female, later identified as Yuet Chow, directed the men to 6 Haskell Street.

When they arrived, Feigenbaum said the men were led upstairs where a young woman was waiting for them wearing lingerie. They left $130 on a dresser and received a massage, as well as various sexual acts, the ADA said.

A search of the Haskell Street property as well as an additional West Roxbury address where the Chows lived yielded evidence that included more than $20,000 in cash, condoms, and other items, Feigenbaum said.

The web site backpage.com shut down its “adult” ads section after a Senate report that accused the site of editing advertisements to remove words that refer to sex trafficking. The site’s brass have refused to testify before congress. State Attorney General Maura Healey, who has made combating human trafficking a focus of her office, has also frequently cited the website in interviews and legal actions.

Yuet Chow stood in the holding bay of the seventh-floor courtroom with her head in her hands as the charges against her and her husband were described. Kim Chow smiled at his two daughters, one of whom left the courtroom in tears, as he was led out in handcuffs.

Suffolk Superior Court Clerk Magistrate Edward Curley kept the bail for the couple at $500,000 each. The amount had been reduced from $1 million after their initial arrangement in Brighton in September, their attorneys said.

The couple's case will be heard in Suffolk Superior again tomorrow for a bail review.

“It’s ludicrous, bail is not supposed to be used as a means of detaining someone, you don't set an unattainable bail as an end around to the statute we have,” said Robert Sheketoff, representing Yuet Chow.

Both lawyers argued the government did not present sufficient facts to warrant a human trafficking charge.

“What did you hear that suggests it’s human trafficking? “ Sheketoff asked rhetorically. “There’s nothing.”

“Even if you take the government’s case on face value, a lot of times defendants charged with these crimes are drugging women and keeping them hooked on heroin in exchange for sexual favors and deriving their income,” Lapore added. “It’s not that type of case at all, to deem it human trafficking, there is no lawful basis for it at all.”

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley's office pushed back against the suggestion that human trafficking charges are not warranted.

"Human trafficking takes many forms, and the idea that it’s only a serious crime when its victims are literally chained to radiators is outdated and inaccurate," said Jake Wark, a spokesman for Conley.

Under state law, trafficking charges can apply to someone who knowingly subjects or recruits another person to "engage in commercial sexual activity," or benefits financially as a result of that activity.

Lapore, who shook his head in frustration when the bail was set, suggested “keeping a brothel, a house of prostitution,” would be a more appropriate charge, if the ADA’s case is taken as fact.

The Chows are due back in court March 1 for a pretrial hearing.

The Haskell Street location is the second in the Allston-Brighton area to be the focus of a human trafficking investigation following a tip from an area resident that led to the arrest of 16 people. Ten women were set free after police raided a home on Brooks Street in Brighton last fall. The defendants in the Brooks Street case are due in Suffolk Superior Court next week.