A 59-year-old woman accused of running brothels in Dallas has pleaded guilty to a federal racketeering charge for arranging to provide 20 women to businessmen in exchange for $40,000.
Helen Kim was arrested in November after a sting at a Dallas hotel, where law enforcement “liberated a number of foreign-born commercial sex workers,” according to the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas.
Federal court records show Kim owns the massage parlors, Pink One and Illusion Spa.
“We were determined to hold her accountable for her willingness to demean other women for financial gain,” said U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox, in a written statement.
Kim pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal charge of use of a facility of interstate commerce in aid of a racketeering enterprise involving prostitution.
She and her son, 36-year-old Daniel Mendoza Jr., arranged to provide at least 20 women to have sex with businessmen at a Dallas hotel, court records show.
Mendoza, while speaking with an informant, said his mother and her friends have been in business for more than 30 years. He told the informant that his mother would be the person providing the women to have sex with businessmen at a hotel.
Kim and her son started arranging to provide women to the businessmen in September. Mendoza told the informant that each woman would cost more than the usual rate at the massage parlor because they were going to a hotel.
Mendoza told the informant the women usually make about $200 an hour but he and his mother would charge $600 an hour for each girl because they were going offsite, court records show.
The man also said the price included “doing it more than once.”
He also offered to provide cocaine and male enhancement drugs for the party of businessmen, records show.
The informant later discussed the plans with Kim, who said she wanted to take photographs of the women so that the men knew who they would be getting.
“It’s a lot of girls right. You know you cannot just show it’s like, a, he said, ‘No mom, no fat girl or whatever,’” Kim told the informant in a recorded conversation.
Kim agreed to take several of the women to a sushi bar to meet with a prospective buyer. She promised the party of businessmen would get a "girlfriend experience" with the women who worked for her.
Federal officials said 10 sex workers were employed at her two brothels, and many of those women lived there for when customers visited during all hours of the day.
As part of her guilty plea, Kim forfeited more than $41,000 found at her brothels during a search, records show.
She has not been sentenced, but faces up to five years in federal prison.
