Courts in Massachusetts have dismissed charges against all 34 men accused of buying sex from a high-end brothel network in the Cambridge area, ending the criminal cases against the operation’s clients, the Boston Globe reported.
Each of the men made a standard agreement with Middlesex County prosecutors: pay a $2,000 fee to advocacy organizations, attend the Community Approach to Reduce Demand program and stay away from sex workers. If the conditions are met, the charges are dropped after nine months. The men did not have to admit wrongdoing.
None of the men faced jail time, an outcome legal observers described as routine because paying for sex is a misdemeanour in Massachusetts and none had a prior criminal record. The operators of the network faced more serious punishment. Han Lee, who federal authorities said started the ring in 2018 and built it into one of the most lucrative prostitution networks on the East Coast, was sentenced to four years in prison after she and two co-defendants pleaded guilty to federal charges.
Federal authorities arrested Han Lee, property manager James Lee and booker Junmyung Lee, none of them related, in November 2023. Prosecutors said the clientele included doctors, lawyers, politicians and defense contractors, drawing national attention to the case.
Because buying sex is a state crime, federal law enforcement worked with Cambridge police to file charges against the clients. Under Massachusetts law, non-felony charges that do not stem from a live arrest are first presented privately to a clerk magistrate in a “show-cause” hearing.
The Cambridge District Court clerk ordered the hearings open to the public, citing public interest. The men sued to keep them closed, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled against them after a year-long legal fight, the Globe reported.
In spring 2025, clerk magistrate Sharon Shelfer Casey held the hearings before reporters over three consecutive Fridays, reading each man’s name aloud and ordering every charge to advance. The 34 men were a fraction of the 2,800 contacts saved in the brothel’s phone; authorities charged only those who had exchanged at least about 400 text messages with the operators, according to the Globe.
Several of the men lost their jobs, the Globe reported. The most prominent of the accused, then-Cambridge city councillor Paul Toner, did not run for reelection after the case was publicised. Benjamin Urbelis, whose firm represented seven of the men, said “all had different paths in how they’ve moved forward” after the dismissals, and declined to give details.
Advocates for exploited women said exposing the buyers was the point. “We shouldn’t have to beg and plead for the buyers to be known,” said Audrey Morrissey, a former sex worker who runs the Boston-based nonprofit My Life My Choice. “We need the buyers held accountable.”
Audra Doody, a former sex worker who runs the Safe Exit Initiative in Worcester, praised the decision to charge the men and said the $2,000 fees were unusually high for such cases. Doody, who speaks at the education program, said it deters some men from reoffending, though she said she gets through to “some, not others.” She said soliciting sex should be made a felony under state law.
With the last criminal cases concluded, further information about other possible clients is unlikely to emerge, the Globe reported.