Over the next eight months, Detective
Mike Fenton launched an investigation
into what he believed was a large-scale
prostitution ring engaged in human traf-
icking. Because one of the massage
parlors, Orchids of Asia Day Spa, fell on
the other side of the county line, in Palm
Beach County, Fenton’s oce notied
Detective Andrew Sharp of the Jupiter
police, who began his own investigation
in October 2018.
Orchids is located o U.S. 1, in a strip
mall anchored by a Publix supermarket.
Jupiter is a three-bar town that is home to
what one local calls “old and quiet mon-
ey.” Like most spas in the area, Orchids
charged $59 for a half hour massage and
$79 for a full hour. Like many spas in the
United States, it’s staed by women of
Asian descent.
For seven days in early November
2018, Sharp and his team staked out the
spa. Almost everyone they saw enter was
a man. One day, a group of eight men who
arrived in a golf cart made touchdown
gestures before entering, their arms
ung up to indicate that they were about
to score. “At that point I understood this
was not just a regular massage parlor but
one that was an illicit massage business,”
Sharp later testied.
Sharp asked Herzog if she could sur-
vey the parlor, and on November 14, she
complied.
Herzog later testiied that the spa
workers appeared agitated by her visit
and failed to make eye contact. “As the
inspection progressed, I began to feel
more and more uneasy,” she recalled.
Herzog noted an “excessive amount of
food in the refrigerator.” She also noted
bedding, clothing, and a atiron. Her-
zog’s report gave Sharp sucient cause to
search the spa’s trash, and on November
14 and 19, his team found semen among
the refuse. Last January, he requested
what is colloquially known as a sneak-
and-peek search warrant.
The warrant is a holdover from 9/11.
Issued under the Patriot Act, it was ini-
tially designed to temporarily expand
surveillance and investigative powers of
law enforcement agencies in domestic
terrorism cases. Since then, however,
both the act and the warrant have been
routinely used in cases that stray far from
their original intent.
Sharp received the warrant on January
15, and two days later his team returned to
Orchids, where they evacuated the prem-
ises, telling workers that a bomb threat had
been called in. While the women waited
outside, ocers placed hidden cameras in
the ceilings of the massage rooms.
Over the next ve days, Sharp and his
team watched, via a live feed, as more
than 20 men received manual sex, oral
sex, and anal play. When the johns left
the spa, an ocer would follow them and
initiate a trac stop as a pretext for iden-
tifying the men.
Among the patrons who turned up on
the surveillance video at Orchids was
Robert Kraft, the 78-year-old owner of
the New England Patriots. Kraft, who
visited the spa on the afternoon of Janu-
ary 19, spends part of the year in a dou-
ble oceanfront apartment he owns on
Breakers Row, among the most coveted
addresses in Palm Beach. Earlier that
day, according to a man I spoke with who
asked to be identied only as Kraft’s “best
guy friend,” Kraft had gone to the hotel
spa for a massage. When he was unable
to get an appointment, he conferred with
his old friend Peter Bernon, the dairy andplastics tycoon who also lives in Palm
Beach. Bernon oered to drive Kraft in
his 2014 white Bentley to a place he knew
in Jupiter, 20 miles up the Treasure Coast.
At Orchids, according to the Jupiter
police, Kraft paid cash to the spa’s co-
owner, Lei Wang, who goes by Lulu, and
received a hand job from her and another
worker, later identied as Shen Mingbi.
After Kraft ejaculated, Mingbi wiped his
penis with a white towel. Then she and
Lulu helped him get dressed.
As Kraft left the spa in the white Bent-
ley, Ocer Scott Kimbark, nicknamed
Bark, stopped the car for a minor trac
violation. Kraft asked the ocer if he was
a Miami Dolphins fan and showed him
his Super Bowl ring, explaining that he
was the owner of the Patriots. Kimbark,
having accomplished his mission, let
Kraft and Bernon go with a warning.
Later that day, Kraft called his friend.
“You won’t believe what happened to
me,” his friend recalls him bragging.
Kraft explained how he had gone for
what he thought was a regular massage,
but that the masseuse had given him a
hand job instead.
The friend excoriated Kraft for getting
a “rub and tug.” Kraft, seemingly hurt,
insisted that it “wasn’t like that.” He said
he had felt a real connection with Lulu
and Mingbi.
Later that evening, Kraft received
a call from Orchids, asking him to visit
again. (At the time, Kraft’s number in
Palm Beach was publicly listed.) Kraft,
according to his friend, was thrilled. He
did not seem to understand that the spa
was merely soliciting repeat business.
The next day, Kraft returned to Orchids,
this time with a driver in a 2015 blue Bent-
ley. He arrived before 11 a.m., qualifying
for the early bird special: $15 off. He
received a hand job and a blow job from
Lulu, and left after 14 minutes. That after-
noon he ew to Kansas City, to watch his
team play the Chiefs in the NFL playos.
The Patriots won.II. THE SEX RING
O
n February 19, after stag-
ing dramatic raids on
nearly a dozen massage
parlors in South Florida,
Sheriff William Snyder
held a press conference. Local ocers,
he announced, working alongside Immi-
gration and Customs Enforcement andI. THE RAID
On July 6, 2018, a health inspector named
Karen Herzog visited a massage parlor in
South Florida for a routine inspection. She
noticed that the spa worker, a young Asian
woman, was “dressed provocatively,” spoke
“little English,” and appeared “nervous.” Herzog also not-
ed suitcases, clothes, a fridge full of food, and condoms, all
of which, according to the training she had received, could
be signs of human tracking. She reported her ndings
to the Martin County sheri’s oce.£
108 VANITY FAIR NOVEMBER 2019
PAGES 106–7: PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX