Intel Officials: High-End Brothels Likely a Honeypot Scheme

Six high-end brothels in the suburbs of Boston and Washington, D.C., were likely set up by a foreign intelligence service in a honeypot scheme to glean U.S. secrets, intelligence officials say.

The officials, who spoke with the Daily Mail, say the brothels targeted politicians, senior government officials, and defense contractors.

While a 41-year-old South Korean woman is accused of masterminding the operation, the intel officials say that a handful of other countries could actually be behind the scheme, including Russia, China, and even Israel.

“Having the Koreans out front could have been a false flag to give China or another country plausible deniability if the plot unraveled,” a former CIA senior operations officer told the Mail.

The brothels were raided in November, and prosecutors said they plan to charge 28 people in Massachusetts alone.

Acting U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Joshua Levy said his office will seek “accountability for the buyers who fuel the commercial sex industry.”

Alleged mastermind Han Lee, Junmyung Lee, 30, and James Lee, 68 — all U.S. citizens born in South Korea — were charged with conspiring to coerce and entice women to travel to engage in illegal sexual activity. The defendants are not related.

The sex ring’s clients, who paid up to $600 per hour, were a veritable who’s who and reportedly included members of Congress, military officers, national security contractors, corporate executives, professors, lawyers, and scientists.

So far, none of the clients have been identified or charged, but that could soon change, as federal prosecutors announced last month that they are seeking criminal charges.

Operating from luxury apartments in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., two of the brothels were about a 15-minute drive from the White House, Congress, the Pentagon, and the CIA. Defense contractors including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics also populate the surrounding area.

The other four brothels were based in Boston, where defense contractors and top-tier universities, like Harvard and MIT, abound. Such academic institutions train government and military officials and produce reports for the Pentagon and CIA.

“The most valuable information in Washington and Boston are government secrets,” a retired foreign spy who is well versed in honeypots told the Mail.

“If you open a prostitution business that caters to wealthy clients in those cities, you'll get a lot of people walking through the doors that have access to them,” the person said.

Would-be clients reportedly had to apply for membership before they could book an appointment and required documentation included government-issued ID, phone and email contacts, employer information, and credit card records.

Without batting an eye, various political, military, and business officials turned the information over, the Mail reported.

“Finding idiots like this would be pure gold for an intelligence service running a honeypot,” the retired foreign spy said.

A retired CIA senior operations officer who spoke with the Mail was also shocked.

“This is at the level of a Nigerian prince scam,” she said.

According to the officials, there are only a handful of overseas spy agencies that would have the ability to pull off a complex honeypot scheme and would run the risk of doing so in the U.S.

The KGB was known to frequently run honeypot schemes during the Cold War, making Russia an obvious candidate. The KGB’s modern successor agency, the FSB, is also known to employ the tactic.

Most of the officials who spoke with the Mail suggested China or South Korea as likely suspects.

Beijing’s influence operations were deemed such a threat that the FBI established a special unit to address the problem in 2019.

House Republicans removed Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., from the Intelligence Committee last year over allegations of a relationship in the mid-2010s with suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang. She fled the U.S. in 2015.

Friendly foreign intel services, such as the Israeli Mossad — a known prolific user of honeypots — are also on the list of suspects. Calling seduction for national security purposes a blessing, Rabbi Ari Shvat said in 2010 that “an unmarried operative should be preferred in 'honey trap' cases.”

“But, if there was no other choice, her husband should divorce her and remarry her after the fact,” he said, according to the Mail.

Other officials say the South Korean roots of the sex ring suspects indicate that Seoul’s intelligence service was involved, pointing to the country’s extensive political and commercial stakes in Washington as a motive.