Federal agents raided a St. Thomas strip club Friday night that they alleged was actually a brothel, where dancers brought in from outside the territory were coerced into a commercial sex scheme to repay travel and housing expenses, according to court records released Saturday.
Some alleged victims, as young as 17, stripped when they started working for previous iterations of Red Hook’s Tootsys Gentlemen’s Club, according to court records. Some, smuggled into the territory illegally, had their passports seized until payment was made, according to court records.
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrested 56-year-old Hussein Jamil, who also goes by Hussian Jamil Suarez and Tony, 39-year-old Magda Castro Santos, also known as Tatiana, and Julio Hidaldo De Pena, 65. All three were charged with conspiracy to transport for the purpose of prostitution, conspiracy to commit interstate and foreign travel or transportation in aid of racketeering enterprises, and conspiracy to harbor aliens for financial gain — punishable by a maximum of 10 years in prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
They appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge G. Alan Teague Saturday and were held without bail ahead of their detention hearings scheduled for Monday afternoon.
The operation involved flying in exotic dancers from the mainland and smuggling in others without proper documentation, prosecutors alleged. Most of the women lived in a Bolongo house rented by Jamil. Undocumented workers smuggled in through the BVI, however, were kept away from American dancers, victims told law enforcement.
The Friday night raid on the Bolongo home caught the attention of multiple social media users who posted alerts of a strangely low-flying helicopter in the Bolongo area, as well as emergency vehicles.
Alleged sex-trafficking victims told law enforcement that Jamil contacted and lured the dancers by phone or social media, offering to pay for flights and provide low-cost lodging. The club’s website remained active Saturday, with an advertisement for dancers that offered housing, transportation to the club, and the potential for paid flights.
Hidaldo De Pena allegedly ran the security camera-laden house and transported women between the Bolongo home and Tootsys, which was managed by Castro Santos, according to court records.
Her duties included ensuring the dancers paid their fees, directing clients to the dancers, and collecting payments for private dances and commercial sex, prosecutors alleged.
Dancers were typically charged $100 to $200 per week to live at the Bolongo house and made to pay a $60 buy-in fee every night in order to work at Tootsys, according to court records. They were required to work six nights a week — Tuesday through Sunday — and were fined $500 for every night’s work they missed. They were also fined $10 for every 15 minutes they were late to work, prosecutors alleged.
“When dancers arrived on St. Thomas for the purpose of working at Tootsys, the alleged conspirators’ coercive fee scheme pushed the dancers to make more money by engaging in commercial sex, both at Tootsys and through customers ‘buying out’ dancers to take them to an offsite premises,” U.S. Attorney Adam Sleeper said in a written statement.
A criminal complaint filed with Virgin Islands District Court outlined prosecutors’ summary of the operation: “To pay these fees, the conspirators encouraged the dancers to engage in commercial sex acts at Tootsys to make more money. For instance, private dances typically cost $30 for every 15 minutes. Going into the ‘Chandelier Room,’ a room on the main floor reserved for dancers to have sexual intercourse with customers, typically costs $350 every
fifteen minutes. Additionally, customers can ‘buy out’ a dancer to take her off site, often to a hotel room for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex, which typically costs $1,500. The dancers and Tootsys each receive a portion of the payments for these services.”
The Tootsys enterprise may have been ongoing as far back as June 2019, according to court records. Some victims interviewed by authorities allegedly said that when immigration agents and other law enforcement visited the club, undocumented workers would change into street clothes and pretend to be patrons.
One former Tootsys employee told prosecutors several of the undocumented foreign employees had been forced to surrender their passports to club designates. But not all the undocumented Tootsys employees — from Venezuela, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere — felt trapped, according to court records.
A Venezuelan woman was smuggled from Tortola to St. Thomas with the promise of making better money, she told prosecutors. Once working for Tootsys, she was told she needed to repay an $800 smuggling fee. After two months in St. Thomas, she returned to Venezuela — only to return to the U.S. Virgin Islands 20 months later. This time, her fare was paid for by Jamil. She was again smuggled through the BVI to St. John, and then to the Bolongo house in St. Thomas. She again traveled back to Venezuela and then again to St. Thomas for a third round of working at Tootsys. She told prosecutors that she had sex with Jamil to pay off her smuggling debt.
