Feds Name Oregonians In Multinational Sex Trafficking Indictments

PORTLAND, OR – Two federal indictments unsealed on Wednesday charge six people including three Oregonians with running international sex trafficking organizations. The groups operated in the United States, Australia, and Canada, according to the indictment.

The indictments resulted in a series of arrests on Tuesday by the FBI Portland's Child Exploitation Task Force.

Working with law enforcement agencies in more than one dozen cities around the country, the FBI conducted sting operations aimed at the groups run by the people indicted as well as other Asian sex trafficking networks, officials say.

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Oregon U.S. Attorney Billy Williams, who announced the indictments, says that targeting sex trafficking operations – and rescuing those who have been exploiting them – is a top priority for law enforcement.

Williams says that the sex trafficking of adults is often overlooked because people believe that the adults have made a choice.

"This notion is false," he says. "These victims are powerless and often thousands of miles away from their home.

"We have and will continue to aggressively pursue criminals who exploit vulnerable victims."

Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Portland Office Renn Cannon says that that many of the women taken by sex traffickers are often "vulnerable women looking for a new life in the new US who instead find traffickers who cash in on their cultural isolation by profiting from the sale of sex services."

Cannon says that the FBI needs "community members who suspect such illegal activity to come forward to help" so that authorities "can recover the victims and provide them with the social, medical, and legal services they need.

The three Oregonians named in the indictments are 32-year-old Chaodan Wang and 35-year-old Ting Fu of Beaverton and 40-year-old Hui Ling Sun of Portland.

The indictment says that 46-year-old Mark Chen of Toronto would recruit women from China who he would bring to the United States where they were forced into prostitution, which he promoted at brothels in Beaverton, Portland, and Tigard.

The third Oregonian arrested is 40-year-old Hui Ling Sun of Portland. She is accused in a separate indictment of using interstate facilities to promote a racketeering enterprise. The indictment does not elaborate.

According to court documents in the Chen indictment, each brothel, the organization would appoint a boss to oversee operations.

The "boss" would secure rooms in a hotel or apartment complex. Customers would call a number listed on a website or one of its connected sites, or send a message via text, email, or through an encrypted, China-based messaging service called WeChat.

A dispatcher would take the call and process the request for a "date," coordinating the time and place.

Officials say that the dispatchers kept track of all calls, the customers, the women, and details of the dates on a computerized database.

The database was seized by the feds who have been using it to continue the investigation.

Federal agents also took control of the website – www.supermatchescort.com – that was used as well as several connected sites.

Photo of Sun via the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office.