'Sufficient evidence' found to bring charges against 12 men in first Cambridge sex ring hearing

Twelve men accused of paying for sex at a high-end brothel in Greater Boston will now face charges, after hearings Friday in Cambridge District Court.

Clerk Magistrate Sharon Shelfer Casey declared there was sufficient evidence to charge the men with counts of "sexual conduct for fee." The three people who ran the sex ring have pled guilty to federal charges filed last year.

The Massachusetts "show cause" hearings are typically held in secret. But in this instance, the clerk agreed to open the proceedings, due to public interest, a decision that was upheld by the state's highest court.

The men, whose identities became public Friday, range in age and occupation, and include a software engineer and a radiologic technologist at a large Boston hospital. Only two of the alleged brothel patrons appeared in court; the others sent lawyers to represent them.

In several of the cases, lawyers asked the clerk for leniency because their clients had no previous criminal records. One attorney said his client’s marriage had crumbled as a result of the federal investigation. Another described his client, who works in healthcare, as a “hero,” saying he's "the type of person who’s going to learn from this mistake."

Federal prosecutors have previously said the illegal scheme involved locations in Cambridge, Watertown and the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and that several of the roughly two-dozen men under investigation are wealthy or prominent people from Massachusetts and the D.C. area. None of the men in Friday's hearings appear to be particularly well known.

In each hearing, Cambridge police outlined a similar story. Alleged patrons started by texting a phone number found on a brothel website. The logistics of an encounter were worked out over text: location, price, length of time. Men agreed to pay hundreds of dollars for encounters ranging from a half hour to two hours. Some asked for specific women by name.

The nature of sexual acts was agreed upon beforehand, in acronyms like “gfe,” or “girlfriend experience,” defined by police as “a more intimate experience [that] blurs the boundaries between a financial transaction and a romantic relationship.” Buyers were instructed to go to an apartment in Cambridge or Watertown and text when they arrived. They were warned against negotiating directly with the women selling sex.

Some attorneys at the Friday hearings tried to poke holes in the evidence offered by police, noting inconsistencies in some of the information presented and pointing to a lack of physical evidence. The clerk magistrate thanked the lawyers for their “zealous advocacy” but found sufficient evidence for probable cause in every case. She warned that if the accused did not appear at their next court dates, a warrant would be issued for their arrest.

The three defendants who ran the sex ring and were prosecuted by the Department of Justice include a woman, Han Lee of Cambridge, and two men, Junmyung Lee of Dedham and James Lee of Torrance, California. They are scheduled to be sentenced in the coming weeks.

Some of the accused patrons in the investigation had in earlier months appealed to the Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court to keep their identities private. But the court sided with the Cambridge District Court clerk that the preliminary hearings should instead be public. Records on their cases are now public as well.

WBUR, along with NBC 10 Boston and The Boston Globe, fought to make these "show cause" hearings public, arguing there is heightened public interest in the investigation. Court data obtained by WBUR has revealed disparities in clerk magistrate hearing outcomes based on gender and whether the accused have access to a lawyer.

Two additional hearings related to the investigation are scheduled for March 21 and March 28. The status of the D.C.-area cases, which the DOJ says were referred to prosecutors in Virginia, could not immediately be learned.

Material from The Associated Press was used in this report. WBUR's Todd Wallack also contributed to this report.