WILLMAR — A Willmar business owner was arrested over the weekend on suspicion of assault at his massage parlor and charged with disorderly housing and soliciting a woman into prostitution.
Contribution / Kandiyohi County Sheriff's Office
Ying He, 55, made her first appearance in Kandiyohi County District Court on Tuesday, March 12, on a felony charge of soliciting prostitution from a female employee at a massage parlor in Willmar.
A felony charge of disorderly housing management and a misdemeanor charge of fifth-degree assault were also filed against her.
Minnesota law defines disorderly housing as a place where habitual law violations occur, which can include prostitution, the sale or possession of controlled substances, gambling, and the unauthorized sale of alcoholic beverages. .
Judge Melissa Listog set bail at $150,000 without conditions. Conditional bail was set at $50,000, including the condition that he have no contact with the alleged victim and that he produce his passport within three hours of his release.
She was being held in the Kandiyohi County Jail as of Friday morning. Her next scheduled court appearance is a remote hearing on March 20.
Willmar police responded to the store in the 2400 block of First Street South on March 9, according to a criminal complaint. The owner was outside waving at police, but the person who called 911 was inside the store.
The caller was a woman from California who appeared to be crying as she sat on the floor of the store. Through her interpreter, she told the officer that her boss, her boss, kept her in a small room in the building and wouldn't let her eat, drink, turn on the lights, or leave her house. did.
She told officers she had flown to Minnesota from California on March 3 and had been living in the company ever since. She claimed that God locked her in her small room every day whenever she had no work commitments.
According to the complaint, the woman said she had given a customer a 30-minute massage that day, but when the customer demanded more work, she became angry with the officer and punched him in the head. Additionally, she said she felt dizzy and had a headache.
The woman suffered minor injuries and was taken to the hospital by ambulance.
At the hospital, she told detectives she had been staying at Willmar for about a week after finding work through an agency based in Los Angeles, California.
She paid the agent $100 and was told a flight to Minnesota would cost about $630, according to the complaint. She advised that she paid for half of her ticket, and her new boss, who paid for her other half, arranged for an Uber to take her from her airport to Willmar. .
The woman told police that God controlled her behavior and that she was forced to start working the day after she arrived. Additionally, she said he was told to “do whatever the customer wanted.”
The woman claimed that the man instructed the customer to perform sex acts, and clarified that the “small job” meant masturbating the customer and the “big job” meant having sex with the customer.
When the woman didn't do as he was told, the man became enraged and threatened to find her if she tried to leave, according to the complaint, which said the woman's boss in Los Angeles was a lawyer who had worked for the police department. court.
When the man spoke to the responding officer, the woman denied hitting her and said she had yelled at him and tried to hit her with a water bottle, according to the complaint.
The woman told police she was chasing customers away because she didn't know how to give a massage. The woman told officers she wanted her to leave, and she denied forcing her to live there, according to the complaint.
Police later returned to He's massage parlor and viewed surveillance video from the parlor. According to the complaint, the video shows an interaction between the woman and him in a hallway outside a client room where an adult male enters.
It's unclear what the interaction was, but the two women passed each other, and the video shows the man punching her in the head and punching her two more times before she leaves, according to the complaint. has been done.
Officers arrested him after reviewing the video.
During the execution of the search warrant, law enforcement seized eight different cell phones from inside the business, along with business ledgers and DNA swabs, according to the complaint.
