Malaysian man sentenced to 21 months in US federal jail for running brothel

PETALING JAYA: A 59-year-old Malaysian man was sentenced to one year and nine months in a federal prison in the United States after being convicted of managing a brothel in Georgia.

Chow Chan Kong and two others from China -  Huang Xiaohong and Gong Biyun  - were said to have operated the brothel for two years at a large apartment complex in Doraville, Georgia that lured women from around the U.S. to work as prostitutes.

According to U.S. Attorney Byung J. "BJay" Pak, Chow assisted Huang by managing the day-to-day operations of the business.

"Interstate prostitution is a serious crime that exploits women and harms our community. Brothels remain a blight in segments of our communities," Pak said in a press release on the US Department of Justice website on Tuesday (Jan 2).

The three had pleaded guilty in July 2017 to conspiring to operate an inter-state prostitution scheme involving money laundering.

According to the press release, the defendants induced women of Asian descent to travel to Georgia from across the US, including California and New York to work at the brothel as commercial sex workers.

It added that the defendants regularly used cellular phones to communicate with women who worked as sex workers at the brothel and with their male clients.

The defendants were also said to arrange for sex workers to travel to the brothel on commercial flights into Atlanta approximately every ten days on a rotating basis.

According to a news report, Chow's attorney said he had no decision-making authority and took orders from Huang performing tasks such as driving the sex workers to and from the airport during the two years he worked for her.

The three will be deported from the United States once their sentences have been completed.