Massage schools across the US are suspected of ties to prostitution and selling fake diplomas. Many remain open.

Minnesota officials didn’t know what they’d find after receiving a tip that the American Academy of Acupuncture and hey dude Oriental Medicine, a local massage school, could be tied to prostitution. A locked closet full of student records, off-limits to staff, was an alarming discovery.

So, too, were the massage therapists with credentials from the school who’d lost their licenses for ties to prostitution or human trafficking, and the internship sites and supervisors linked to prostitution. A host of paperwork and financial issues only seemed to arise in the school’s Chinese-language Tuina massage program.

All of it added up to a “theme of prostitution and/or human trafficking,” the Minnesota Office of Higher Education wrote in a letter to the school’s president.

The office, though, lacked the authority to prosecute either allegation. Instead, it went after more mundane issues: Payments that didn’t add up. Missing student information. A haphazard approval process for off-site training.

That was enough for the office in February 2020 to crack down on the Roseville school, ultimately ordering it to close or find a new owner by the following February. The operator of a massage school in Wisconsin purchased the institution and renamed it the American Academy of Health and Wellness.

Around the country, massage schools in towns large and small are suspected of ties to the illicit massage industry, a billion-dollar black market in the U.S. built to sell sex. A monthslong USA TODAY investigation uncovered two dozen schools with connections to either prostitution or fraud, or both.

Like the sex spas themselves, the schools suspected of feeding them workers are hard to detect. It’s often something innocuous that catches an oversight group’s attention: a cheat-sheet pulled from a boot during a massage therapy exam, a counterfeit massage license or a signature forged on official school documents.

As in the Minnesota case, regulators sometimes find ways to skechers shoes ding a school for other infractions, but many slip through a fragmented system of accountability. Bringing charges on serious crimes such as human trafficking and prostitution is rare and difficult.

Sex spas inhabit strip malls and shopping centers across the U.S., operating next to grocery stores and day cares, liquor stores and restaurants. Their names tend to be generically Asian – Oriental Massage, Jade Spa, East-West Therapy – a nod to their often-Asian immigrant workers and a calling card to their predominantly white male customers.

Their existence hinges on an air of legitimacy, and law enforcement and advocates suggest that their owners, some part of vast criminal rings, will do whatever it takes to avoid detection. To receive a massage license, applicants in most states must have attended an approved school. In many cases, they also must pass an exam.

The Seldin/Haring-Smith Foundation, a family foundation focused on accountability in higher education, identified the Minnesota school and others in a report it presented Tuesday to the Department of Education.

A subcommittee from the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday gave the Education Department two weeks to outline its procedures to “identify and stop human or sex trafficking connected with postsecondary education,” citing the foundation’s report.

The committee also requested a list of cosmetology and massage schools receiving taxpayer money controlled by the department.

Department of Education press secretary Kelly Leon said the agency takes seriously any allegation of unlawful activity at a university brooks shoes or college receiving federal money. She added the agency has several enforcement offices that review such allegations to see if they should be investigated more closely.

The former owner of the Minnesota massage school, Changzhen Gong, denied the state’s claims and said he was never given a chance to refute them. He is still paid by the school, USA TODAY found, for helping with the ownership change.

Gong also is featured prominently on the school’s website and was referred to as “president” when he hosted a recent interview on WeChat, a China-based social media app. The school’s old name was still being advertised in a Chinese newspaper as of last month, related to a clinic Gong runs.

While the school’s new ownership satisfied the state of Minnesota, the Seldin/Haring-Smith Foundation noted it bears a striking resemblance to the past institution, including similarities in the academic programs and descriptions of the school’s history.

So far, the new school shows no signs of the alleged ties to human trafficking previously identified by regulators. But Abigail Seldin, a founder of the foundation and recent contender for a Department of Education position, said it was troubling to see institutions continue to operate after concerns were raised, especially in the case of the Minnesota school.

“Everybody did everything they could here,” Seldin said. “Our current regulatory structure doesn’t empower them to do anything more than what happened. So we have to ask: Is it enough?”Massage parlors: ‘Substantial’ fraud, connections to human trafficking

The predicament the Minnesota Office of Higher Education found itself in has confounded other authorities across America.

By design, sex spas are easy to overlook. Neon lights and opaque windows are among the only outward cues; all male clientele and late business hours can be hints, too. Even when they’re identified by local governments and police, what to do about them remains a quandary.

Law enforcement has begun to move away from prostitution arrests in favor of targeting human trafficking, but this approach is notoriously difficult.

Sex trafficking cases typically hinge on whether a masseuse is willing to say she was forced to perform sex acts – a big ask for immigrant women. Prosecutors tend to press charges for crimes connected to trafficking instead, such as money laundering, wire fraud or racketeering.

Local authorities use yet another tool to weed out shady spas: regulation.

The nonprofit that administers one of the most widely used exams for massage therapy licensure, the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards, has a bird’s eye view of fraud in the industry. Anyone who wants to take the test must provide personal information such as mailing address and birth date, along with proof they’ve attended an approved massage school.

Analyzing this data has exposed what the federation called a “substantial amount of fraud” in a 2017 report prepared by its Human Trafficking Task Force. That includes cheating on the national exam, selling fake diplomas and filing license applications on behalf of other people, said Debra Persinger, the federation’s executive director.

Ahmos Netanel, chief executive officer of the California Massage Therapy Council, which runs that state’s voluntary massage therapist certification, has observed it, too.

“We have seen substantial evidence that indicates that human traffickers try to use fraudulent schools to support their operations,” Netanel said, “specifically in the form of either purchasing diplomas or enrolling their victims in schools that do not provide the education they claim they actually provide.”

Illicit massage businesses are often connected to fraudulent schools “that will, for a high fee, provide a fraudulent diploma so that a woman can sit for her licensing exam without any formal training,” according to a 2018 report by Polaris, the nonprofit behind the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

Such “diploma mills” also supply certificates to every worker at a given spa, sometimes issued on the same day and under the same name, Polaris wrote.

In an independent analysis of licensing data from 15 states, USA TODAY identified a similar pattern. In one case, a massage therapist used the address for Royal Irvin College in California to obtain a license in Virginia. It was one of three Virginia massage licenses in her name. In total, the woman held a dozen licenses in various states. She was arrested for prostitution in Illinois and subsequently lost her license in Florida, according to disciplinary records.

Many of the students of American massage schools are Asian immigrants, particularly Chinese. USA TODAY found through interviews and legal cases that schools often prey on those who speak little English or are in economic need. Some schools’ websites and advertisements are entirely in Mandarin.

Sandra Anderson, executive director of Nevada’s State Board of Massage Therapy, said she’s also seen signs of debt bondage, where a school or criminal organization charges students excessive fees and then requires them to work in spas to pay it off. That can leave workers vulnerable to pressure to perform sex acts, she said, which pay more.

“I go out on a regular basis and speak to the students, and in some cases they don’t know they can’t perform sex acts as a massage therapist; they’re not necessarily being taught that,” Anderson said. “It helps curtail it somewhat and helps educate them that perhaps what they’re being told to do by their handlers is not legal.”