Dallas mother employed more than 10 sex workers. Now she’s headed to prison
A Dallas brothel owner was sentenced on Monday to nearly four years in federal prison for agreeing to take in more than $40,000 in exchange for providing illicit sex services to a group of out-of-town “businessmen” at a local hotel.
Helen Kim, 59, had negotiated to provide sexual liaisons with 20 to 25 women at a rate of $2,000 each.
The “businessmen” turned out to be undercover local, state and federal officers working a sting operation in 2018.
Kim had pleaded guilty in August to a federal charge of one count of use of a facility of interstate commerce in aid of racketeering an enterprise involving prostitution.
Kim was identified as being one of the owners of brothels “Pink One” and “Illusion Spa” in Dallas, according to federal court documents. Her son, Daniel Mendoza Jr., also was listed as an owner.
In January, Mendoza was was sentenced to a year and one day in federal prison on a drug charge, according to federal court records.
Kim was arrested after a sting operation at a Dallas hotel liberated a number of foreign-born commercial sex workers.
The businessmen were undercover officers from the the Dallas Police Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and Homeland Security. About 50 officers posed as businessmen at a hotel bar and in rooms upstairs on Nov. 1, 2018.
According to an indictment returned in November, Kim and her 36-year-old son negotiated private sexual liaisons for businessmen ready to pay for sex with 20 to 25 women at a rate of $2,000 each, for a total of at least $40,000.
In her plea papers, Kim admitted that she employed more than 10 commercial sex workers at her two brothels. Many of the women lived at the establishments so they could attend to clients day and night, Kim confessed.
The mother and son team promised the “girlfriend experience,” and even allowed an undercover detective to meet several of the women at a local sushi bar. The officers would discuss buying girls for sex from Mendoza and his mother, Kim, the release said.
According to a complaint filed Oct. 30, 2018, an undercover informant met with Mendoza on Sept. 14, 2018 at Drafthouse, 1850 Market Place Blvd. in Irving, to discuss purchasing about 18 to 20 girls for a night.
During that first meeting, the informant and Mendoza talked about possible price ranges and the number of girls that the informant wanted to order, the court document says. They met again on Sept. 20, 2018, to finalize plans: The informant would get 20 girls for about four hours for multiple men.
During a meeting at a Starbucks, Kim accepted an initial payment of $5,000, according to a press release from the Department of Justice. Kim insisted the men should not talk publicly about the affair.
“The way this is set up,” Kim’s son allegedly said to the undercover officer, “it could be considered human trafficking.”
After police arrested Kim and Mendoza, several of the women were taken to Mosaic House, a local shelter for women fleeing human trafficking. Many had been living at Kim’s brothels, according to the Department of Justice press release.
