An anonymous tip led to the arrest of a Fort Lauderdale woman who was allegedly running two massage parlors, one in Broward County and one in Martin County, as fronts for prostitution operations, officials said.
Wanxin Li, 46, was arrested Thursday at her home in Fort Lauderdale on charges of deriving support from the proceeds of prostitution, money laundering over $100,000 in a year and maintaining a place for prostitution, jail records say.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office said in a news release Tuesday that the Strategic Investigations Division learned in March that Li was allegedly running the prostitution operation at her massage business in Oakland Park and at another in Stuart in Martin County.
Without giving further details, the Sheriff’s Office said investigators found evidence of prostitution acts at both locations and received search warrants and Li’s arrest warrant. There is no evidence of human trafficking, the Sheriff’s Office said.
On the day of Li’s arrest, detectives searched her home in Fort Lauderdale and the spa in the 1500 block of East Oakland Park Boulevard while the Martin County Sheriff’s Office searched the business in a strip mall in the 1600 block of Northwest Federal Highway, the Sheriff’s Office said. The business in Oakland Park was empty, but Martin County deputies found two women living at the Stuart business and arrested one of them.
The woman arrested in Martin County is a suspect in a separate, active prostitution investigation, the Sheriff’s Office said. A spokesperson for the Martin County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately return an email seeking information about the search or the arrest in that county.
Li’s arrest warrant filed in Broward County court is sealed. Additional details have not been released.
