The depraved ringleaders of a Queens-based, nationwide sex-trafficking and prostitution ring with “significant” ties to “China” posed for cheery selfies hours after a victim they targeted was “viciously beaten by a rolling pin,” prosecutors said.
The doe-eyed duo — manager Yuan Yuan Chen and her boss Rong Rong Xu — were part of a Flushing-based sex ring that extended all the way to Oregon and included hundreds of sex workers, most of whom were migrants from China forced to hand over their passports, according to U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace.
Prosecutors said both women made numerous trips from Flushing’s Chinatown to China.
Yuan Yuan Chen, 30, was indicted on September 15 after Xu, 31, was arrested last year.
The selfie they took together — just hours after allegedly siccing enforcers on rival sex workers at a Kansas hotel in 2020 — was included in paperwork prosecutors filed to deny Chen bail
In “complete disregard for the victim,” the two women “posed for nearly a dozen ‘selfies,’ smiling and having fun, hours after the victim . . . had been viciously beaten with a rolling pin,” prosecutors wrote.
The pair ruled with an iron fist, circulating videos of rivals being tied up and beaten by hammers, wrenches, and baseball bats to deter them from working for competitors or for themselves, prosecutors said.
Days after the alleged traffickers had another woman duct-taped and brutalized with a baseball bat, the women made depraved jokes about the attack, according to court filings.
“Serves this woman right to get beaten. Really, brought this evil on herself. After a period of time, will need to beat her again,” Xu texted her partner, who responded with a laughing/crying emoji.
Later that day, Xu told Yuan Yuan Chen that it was “too easy to kill a person in America, that it was like killing a chicken.”
Yuan Yuan Chen responded with laughter.
Xu was the alleged leader of the organization, and Yuan Yuan her right-hand woman, prosecutors said.
Chen boasted that she recruited 90% of the group’s sex workers, often women without legal status in the U.S.
She also pinpointed where rivals operated — down to the hotel room number — and had the idea to share videos of the beatings to discourage competition, authorities said.
On Sept. 14, a judge denied bail for Chen, citing the weight of the evidence and her “significant” ties to China.
“The crimes outlined in today’s indictment are among the most heinous we confront,” said Police Commissioner Edward Caban at the time the indictment was announced.
Yuan Yuan Chen earned about $10,000 a month, including $1,500 from a brothel in an undisclosed area of Queens while the organization itself pulled in over $750,000 with accounts held in Xu’s name accounting for approximately half of that money, according to prosecutors.
The organization also exchanged American dollars for Chinese currency, although prosecutors did not say whether the group had been funneling money into Chinese bank accounts as well.
Yuan Yuan Chen is a Chinese citizen in the U.S. on a work authorization but does not have legal status, while Xu has “significant” ties abroad and traveled internationally 11 times between 2016 and 2019, including five trips to China.
Yuan Yuan Chen and two of her alleged enforcers, Yichu Chen and Johnnie Kim, were collared after an investigation by a joint NYPD-FBI task force, which also conducted raids of brothels along the “Market of Sweethearts” in Corona.
Inchul Chang, a Queens building owner who photographed an alleged brothel operating in his building, said his property was raided, but the prostitutes returned the next day.
“For one glorious evening and the next morning the brothel was shut down,” Chang said. “Unfortunately, the raid did not make much of an impression on the working girls and/or their management.”
The raid on September 15 targeted 14 alleged brothels, but netted no arrests, according to NYPD, which executed four search warrants that led to the seizures of cash, condoms, electronic devices, and other records.
Most of the trafficked women are lured with false promises.
“A lot of the people that are recruited in their country of origin [into sex work] are promised they can go back and promised a better life so I think it’s very feasible that all these trips where they were going back is part of the coercion, giving these false promises,” Cristian Eduardo, a human-trafficking consultant and survivor at Shobana Powell Consulting told The Post. “It’s a form of abuse. It’s a tactic of control to give false hope.”
Eduardo said much of the prostitution occurring in broad daylight in Queens is likely sex trafficking.
“Probably more than 90% of prostitution is sex trafficking,” he said. “New York Police Department and the police in Queens can do a better job about really strategizing demand reduction and we do not need to wait until we have these cases to really start tackling prostitution and stop normalizing it.”
