A woman and her brother-in-law will face multiple felony charges for allegedly running a brothel out of a southwest Denver home and using a massage business to launder the profits. A grand jury indicted Xiaoli Gao and Zhong Wei Zhang in November on eight counts related to the suspected prostitution operation, including charges of violating the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act, pimping, money laundering and filing false tax returns.
Instead, the six victims of alleged trafficking were able to connect with services and return to their homes in China, she said. Police began investigating the alleged brothel on West Ellsworth Avenue in March after neighbors called the National Human Trafficking Hotline with concerns about the number of men who came in and out of the home.
The tenants at the home, all young women, never seemed to leave the house, according to the indictment. A Denver Police Department detective visited the home and talked to two of the women living there. The women barely spoke English and told the detective that they just arrived from Los Angeles and only planned to be in the house for about a week, the indictment states. They promised to tell the homeowner to call the detective, and Gao called him shortly after. Gao told the detective that it was her home, but that she no longer lived there and instead rented it to a friend, according to the indictment.
That same month advertisements for sex work began to appear on Backpage. Those who contacted the numbers listed on the advertisements were also directed to addresses in Lakewood and Aurora as well as area hotels.
The neighbors rarely saw the women who lived in the house leave, and the women were routinely moved in and out of the home, the indictment states. Police then installed a camera outside the home, which recorded men over a five-month period who entered the home and left after about 30 minutes. The cameras also caught Gao and Zhang entering the home. But investigators found business was slow at the massage parlor during this same time, the indictment states.
