I. THE RAID

On July 6, 2018, a health inspector named Karen Herzog visited a massage parlor in South Florida for a routine inspection. She noticed that the spa worker, a young Asian woman, was “dressed provocatively,” spoke “little English,” and appeared “nervous.” Herzog also noted suitcases, clothes, a fridge full of food, and condoms, all of which, according to the training she had received, could be signs of human trafficking. She reported her findings to the Martin County sheriff’s office.

Over the next eight months, Detective Mike Fenton launched an investigation into what he believed was a large-scale prostitution ring engaged in human trafficking. Because one of the massage parlors, Orchids of Asia Day Spa, fell on the other side of the county line, in Palm Beach County, Fenton’s office notified Detective Andrew Sharp of the Jupiter police, who began his own investigation in October 2018.

Orchids is located off U.S. 1, in a strip mall anchored by a Publix supermarket. Jupiter is a three-bar town that is home to what one local calls “old and quiet money.” Like most spas in the area, Orchids charged $59 for a half hour massage and $79 for a full hour. Like many spas in the United States, it’s staffed by women of Asian descent.

For seven days in early November 2018, Sharp and his team staked out the spa. Almost everyone they saw enter was a man. One day, a group of eight men who arrived in a golf cart made touchdown gestures before entering, their arms flung up to indicate that they were about to score. “At that point I understood this was not just a regular massage parlor but one that was an illicit massage business,” Sharp later testified.

Sharp asked Herzog if she could survey the parlor, and on November 14, she complied.

Herzog later testified that the spa workers appeared agitated by her visit and failed to make eye contact. “As the inspection progressed, I began to feel more and more uneasy,” she recalled. Herzog noted an “excessive amount of food in the refrigerator.” She also noted bedding, clothing, and a flatiron. Herzog’s report gave Sharp sufficient cause to search the spa’s trash, and on November 14 and 19, his team found semen among the refuse. Last January, he requested what is colloquially known as a sneak-and-peek search warrant.

The warrant is a holdover from 9/11. Issued under the Patriot Act, it was initially designed to temporarily expand surveillance and investigative powers of law enforcement agencies in domestic terrorism cases. Since then, however, both the act and the warrant have been routinely used in cases that stray far from their original intent.

Sharp received the warrant on January 15, and two days later his team returned to Orchids, where they evacuated the premises, telling workers that a bomb threat had been called in. While the women waited outside, officers placed hidden cameras in the ceilings of the massage rooms.

Over the next five days, Sharp and his team watched, via a live feed, as more than 20 men received manual sex, oral sex, and anal play. When the johns left the spa, an officer would follow them and initiate a traffic stop as a pretext for identifying the men.

Among the patrons who turned up on the surveillance video at Orchids was Robert Kraft, the 78-year-old owner of the New England Patriots. Kraft, who visited the spa on the afternoon of January 19, spends part of the year in a double oceanfront apartment he owns on Breakers Row, among the most coveted addresses in Palm Beach. Earlier that day, according to a man I spoke with who asked to be identified only as Kraft’s “best guy friend,” Kraft had gone to the hotel spa for a massage. When he was unable to get an appointment, he conferred with his old friend Peter Bernon, the dairy and plastics tycoon who also lives in Palm Beach. Bernon offered to drive Kraft in his 2014 white Bentley to a place he knew in Jupiter, 20 miles up the Treasure Coast.