Massage prostitution suspect pleads to single felony - NCWLIFE News

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WENATCHEE — The alleged mastermind of a prostitution ring that operated out of massage parlors in Wenatchee is free from jail after pleading guilty to a felony count in that case.

Linhui Yan, 61, appears March 20 in Chelan County Superior Court on charges of operating a prostitution scheme out of two Wenatchee massage parlors.

NCWLIFE

Yan Yang: Charged with felonies related to the Angel Spa massage scheme.

Photo provided

Linhui Yan, 62, of Tacoma was released from the Chelan County Regional Justice Center on Monday with a plea to second-degree promoting prostitution. Chelan County prosecutors dropped two other counts — money laundering and leading organized crime — and agreed to withdraw identical charges against Yan’s wife, Yan Yang, 45, originally accused of partnering in the crime but never located by law enforcement.

"The State’s priority was ensuring a conviction that showed Yan was involved in running a prostitution operation," chief deputy criminal prosecutor Ryan Valaas told NCWLIFE, "and that’s what this conviction does."

Wenatchee police and the Columbia River Drug Task Force raided the Yans’ massage operations in March 2023, after finding evidence that they had employed women to offer sexual services at the two businesses. It took another year before Yan was arrested, upon returning to the United States from China. He was held for seven months in lieu of $500,000 bond.

Yan's plea Monday carried a jail sentence of just three months from Superior Court Judge Robert Jourdan, and he was released with his time already served. His state license as a massage therapist will be revoked for five years under Jourdan's order; it was already suspended indefinitely by the Washington Department of Health in November 2023.

Valaas said it would have been difficult at trial to directly connect Linhui Yan to commercial sexual activity at the massage parlors, although he held the business licenses and leased the operating spaces in the 400 block of North Mission Street and the 300 block of North Chelan Avenue.

"Clearly, Yan was running the parlors in a very general sense ... but we would have had to show his actual knowledge of the prostitution occurring inside, and with the evidence we had, that link would have to be inferred circumstantially," Valaas said in an email. "This problem was compounded by the fact that the women working inside the parlors are quite transient and we could not locate any of them for trial."

Yan entered what's known as an Alford plea, professing innocence to the promoting prostitution charge but agreeing he was likely to face conviction at trial. His attorney, Gregory Scott Hoover of Bellevue, wrote in supporting documents that Yan was "taking this plea in order to protect his wife and having the charges ... dismissed on her."

During the investigation, the police task force seized an estimated $150,000 from multiple bank accounts allegedly held by the Yans. Through Hoover, the couple filed suit to recover the money while they were sought on arrest warrants, but their civil case expired in September after Hoover took no further action in court. They have since entered a motion to reinstate the lawsuit.