![Fire :fire: 🔥](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/6.6/png/unicode/64/1f525.png)
A fascinating story broke yesterday, headlined in CNBC as “
High-end brothels serviced elected officials, tech and pharma execs, military brass: Feds.” I’ll skip the picture.
We don’t yet know much. But what we’ve learned so far is that a multi-year DOJ investigation out of the Massachusetts US Attorney’s office made three key arrests in a prostitution sting this week.
The handful of disclosed facts already suggest staggering implications.
First, the three arrested men all appear to be Chinese nationals: ‘James’ Lee, 68, Han “Hana” Lee, 41, and Junmyung Lee, 30. Court papers show prosecutors believe they used other aliases and are flight risks. The men operated a sophisticated, multi-state, high-end prostitution service targeting elected officials, military leaders, and business executives. Sound familiar yet? According to the filed papers, targeted customers also included “lawyers, scientists and accountants.”
The idiots who fell for the scheme were serviced out of luxury apartments, which would have been trivially easy to wire for video and audio. Customers were required to be “vetted,” in a detailed “verification” process that would have completely implicated them in the scheme and made them fully susceptible to blackmail.
If they were, in fact, Chinese spies, they were brilliant. Or, Americans are so stupid the Chinese look smart by comparison. They used our own money to set up the scheme. For example, James Lee’s various business accounts showed deposits of a half million in federal Covid-19 relief funds. The affidavit stated the Covid-19 relief funds were “possibly fraudulently obtained.”
According to the investigating agent’s affidavit, there are “potentially hundreds” of “yet to be identified customers.” The affidavit did not name any of the already-identified customers, but noted their names were excluded “not for purposes of maintaining their anonymity, but instead because our investigation into their involvement in prostitution is active and ongoing.”
We don’t yet know who any of the compromised elected officials, military leaders, or business executives were. But we can guess. The scheme focused on two very telling geographic areas: Virginia — just outside Washington D.C. — and Massachusetts, near major financial centers including New York City.
It’s early and I don’t want to get ahead of the story. But the only way we can start to get a handle on this problem is, in my view, by publicizing everyone involved.
There’s a lot that could be speculated about this developing story. James Lee looks like he could be the Chinese Jeffrey Epstein. I was instantly reminded of Whitney Webb’s prescient book, “One Nation Under Blackmail.”
And … why can’t these guys secure their pants? How stupid are our “elites,” really?
Rant about election integrity and local focus; good news from local races; Mass. US Attorney breaks Chinese Epstein case; SADS rapper, actor/director, influencer; House subpoenas various Bidens; more.
www.coffeeandcovid.com