Carlisle massage parlor padlocked, three people charged with prostitution offences

CARLISLE – Signs at Li’s Asian Massage Parlor in Carlisle read “no erotic services.” However, from customer reports and online reviews, regulars knew that if you were willing to pay a little more, the signs didn’t apply.

That’s what Cumberland County detectives say in a new prostitution and human trafficking case filed this week.

Li’s Asian Massage at 300 E. High St. was closed and padlocked on Friday when a PennLive reporter walked by. Small strips of police evidence tape were taped to the double entry doors.

The owner, Chuanxia Wang (65), was charged with the crime of promoting prostitution, human trafficking and trafficking in the proceeds of illegal activities. Two employees will also be charged with prostitution.

Preliminary hearings for all three women are scheduled for next week.

Cumberland County District Attorney Sean McCormack said Friday that this week’s arrests are part of an ongoing effort by his detectives and local police to make Cumberland County known as a place to avoid for human traffickers.

Police said the investigation at Li’s is actually a continuation of an investigation that began at another massage parlor in Cumberland County.

In that case, the informant expressed concerns to police about a rotating group of Asian women working and living for weeks at a massage parlor on West Trindle Road in South Middleton Township and then being replaced by others.

Last month, police raided this salon, GL Massage, and one of the employees revealed she had previously worked at Li’s in Carlisle.

There, that employee alleges, Chuanxia Wang, whom she described as the owner of Li’s, solicited her and other employees to perform sexual acts on customers for payment.

Police then began investigating Li, including interviews with customers who had been recorded coming and going from the business in recent weeks and who were identified through state motor vehicle registrations.

Investigators also looked at websites containing customer reviews of massage parlors and found at least two posts about Li in which customers described receiving “hand jobs” from female employees there after paying a tip that exceeded the “house fees” for the massage.

“Overall the massage wasn’t great, but two was great fun,” one client wrote in July, after describing two separate incidents of masturbation during an hour-long visit followed by hot towel drying.

Several customers tracked down by police, whose names are not included in charging documents, also admitted paying for sexual services at the business, and after being shown photos, identified Wang, of Newport, Perry County, and two other women: Dong Mei Liu and Yue Jun Zhao, both of Flushing, New York, as providers of these services.

Flushing, part of Queens, is one of the epicenters of the nation’s largest Chinese-American community in New York.

Armed with this information, police entered Li’s on November 19 and found Liu (55) and Zhoa (62) working there. Wang, 65, arrived at the scene during the search.

Later that day, Liu and Zhao were arraigned on a single misdemeanor count of prostitution.

Wang, who state records show joined Li’s Asian Massage in February 2018, is charged with running a corrupt organization, human trafficking and promoting prostitution.

Records show Wang and her husband, identified as Ronald Wilson, are listed in the building’s lease as tenants of the property. Wilson, police said, when he filed an affidavit of probable cause, he denied that anything illegal took place at Li’s, although he volunteered that he had heard that GL Massage “had a problem.”

Wang does not own GL Massage, although Wilson confirmed to police that Wang’s massage license was posted there and said she went there to help when business was slow at Li’s.

Police also noted that several potential customers came to Li’s during the raid, and two agreed to be interviewed. They both admitted that they performed “manual work” at the company for an additional fee, even though the signs there stated that the company did not provide “erotic services.”

One of these men also identified Wang, Liu and Zhou as having performed sexual acts on him for money.

Asked about the investigation related to GL Massage, McCormack said Friday that the case is ongoing and “there could potentially be additional charges…

“I think Cumberland County is ripe for this type of crime because we have a highway system,” McCormack said, referring to the fact that three interstate highways, as well as Interstate 81 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike, pass through Cumberland.

“The message I am trying to convey is that we will not tolerate human trafficking in Cumberland County and we will do everything in our power to root it out.”

On an unrelated matter, in August 2023, county detectives raided five massage parlors operating in several West Shore communities and accused its cameraman, Min Dong, 55, of Camp Hill, of running a corrupt organization and other charges.

Charges against Dong are still pending.

McCormack noted that the county also conducts periodic sweeps to identify and arrest people who patronize people who are victims of labor or sex trafficking.