The “booker” of a network of brothels operating out of Massachusetts and Virginia was sentenced April 18 to a year in prison and another year of supervised release, as well as fined $200,000 in a Boston federal court.
As a booker, Junmyung Lee, a Dedham, Mass. resident, vetted clients and arranged appointments for the brothels.
One of those clients was Paul Toner, a Cambridge city councilor.
Lee’s sentencing follows his arrest in Nov. 2023 alongside co-defendants James Lee, a California resident, and Han Lee, a Cambridge resident. Han Lee was sentenced to four years in prison in March and James Lee will be sentenced on May 28.
The brothel is believed to have been in operation since 2020, producing more than $5 million in revenues from over 9,400 appointments, according to federal authorities. 28 clients have been accused of soliciting the Lee’s brothel, including Toner.
Several Cambridge city council members called for Toner’s resignation, including Patricia Nolan, Burhan Azeem and Vice-Mayor of Cambridge Marc McGovern.
“Our joint statement when news first broke was clear: ‘Illegal prostitution is inherently exploitative and not a victimless crime. We stand with those harmed by exploitation.’ Given the severity of the allegations and their impact on our community, we believe it is in the best interest of the city that Councillor Toner resign and not seek re-election,” wrote Nolan and Azeem in an email statement to The Daily Free Press.
Other Cambridge community members expressed concern about Toner’s involvement in the brothel, including Robert Eckstut, chair of the Cambridge Ward 4 Democrats. Eckstut said he was concerned with the source of Toner’s brothel spending.
“It seems like he was one of the top clients, if not the top client, as far as literally hundreds of trips over a period of years,” Eckstut said. “I can’t speak with authority on exactly how much that cost, but it seems as though, relative prices, that’s hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
McGovern and Zorah Ahmed, an associate professor at the Boston University School of Law, addressed the condition of the brothel’s sex workers.
“It’s entirely possible that their needs are completely sidelined and the goal is really just to crack down on these individual customers and the people who ran the rake,” Ahmed said.
McGovern said he viewed the sex workers as victims in the case, emphasizing the probability of coercion by brothel operators.
“They didn’t negotiate their prices. They couldn’t come and go as they pleased. They were moved from state to state… they couldn’t choose or refuse what their clients wanted,” McGovern said. “It certainly appear[s] that these were women who were not in control of their situation or their bodies.”
In light of the fact that a public official was included in the scandal, media organizations asked the court to hold the hearings publicly.
Jeff Pyle, an attorney for Prince Lobel law firm and counsel for WBUR in this case, sent a request to the Clerk Magistrate for the hearings to be held publicly along with other lawyers representing media outlets like the Boston Globe and NBC10 Boston.
While cases such as this one are typically held in private, court rules permit them to be held “in the formal atmosphere of an open courtroom” when the public’s interest in transparency “more or less outweighs” the need for privacy, Pyle said.
Both the Clerk Magistrate and Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court agreed to hold the hearings publicly.
Shira Diner, a lecturer and clinical instructor in the Criminal Law Clinic at Boston University Law School and president of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, expressed optimism that the court’s decision to make the proceedings public will set a precedent for other cases in the future.
She also viewed the publicity of this case as an important step towards equity in the criminal justice system.
The defendants in this case had the resources to hire attorneys and advocate for anonymity — a privilege rarely afforded to low-income individuals, who typically cannot access legal representation until they are formally charged with a crime, Diner said.
“We should be paying attention to who gets the benefit of anonymity and protection and who doesn’t,” she said.
In the wake of the scandal and Toner’s involvement in it, Councilors McGovern and Ayesha Wilson plan to hold a community meeting to address sex trafficking in Cambridge.
“How do we move forward? How do we make Cambridge a safe place for everybody? How do we make sure that this kind of thing isn’t happening?” McGovern said. “Part of that is not condoning it.”
