A 54-year-old Lahaina man wanted in Minnesota on federal sex trafficking charges will remain in custody pending his transfer to the mainland.
Maui police and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations special agents arrested Todd Vassey on Tuesday. A federal grand jury charged Vassey and 16 others by secret indictment last month on sex trafficking and related charges.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Kenneth J. Mansfield on Friday ordered Vassey held without the opportunity for release on bond pending his transfer to Minnesota.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jill Otake told Mansfield that Vassey has no job or family in Hawaii, has made 39 round trips to U.S. and overseas destinations since 2003, and has lived off and on in Thailand, where the trafficked women are from. Otake also said Vassey has ties to the alleged ring leader of the sex trafficking organization and to Atlanta, where investigators said the organization moved to last year from Minnesota.
According to the indictment, Vassey was a “runner” who escorted the trafficked women on excursions outside the houses of prostitution, to prevent them from running away. Runners are often male clients of the organization who may be compensated in part with sex with the trafficked women, the indictment said.
Investigators said in court records that Vassey also rented apartments in Bloomington, Minn., for the organization to use as houses of prostitution.
The indictment said that since at least 2009, the organization has trafficked hundreds of women from Thailand to work as prostitutes in cities in Minnesota, Arizona, California, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, Texas and Washington, D.C.
The Minnesota organization has ties to a Thai sex trafficking operation in Seattle and in Europe, investigators said in court records. Sumalee Intarathong, the alleged ringleader, is in custody in Belgium awaiting extradition to the U.S. She was arrested in the Netherlands in January and extradited to face sex trafficking charges involving Thai women in Belgium. Belgian officials arrested her in August in connection with the Minnesota case while she was awaiting trial on the Belgian charges.
