CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Court hearings for the “wealthy and well-connected” men accused of being customers of an interstate commercial sex ring that ran high-end brothels in two Massachusetts communities continued on Friday morning.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in November that the hearings would be public. The hearings took place in Cambridge District Court.
So far, a total of 32 men have been identified as alleged brothel customers during court hearings held on March 28, March 21, and March 14.
Among them are Cambridge City Councilor Paul Toner and former Massachusetts General Hospital oncologist James Cusack Jr.
Toner, former president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, communicated with the “brothel phone” a total of 432 times and paid for sex at least 13 times over roughly a seven-month period, police wrote in their report.
On Friday, 10 new alleged brothel customers from Massachusetts were identified. None of the men showed up in court for their probable cause hearings. Their attorneys also did not appear in court.
Cambridge Police Lieutenant Jarred Cabral detailed the allegations against the men as he read from police reports. The men identified Friday included:
- Amrit Chaudhuri, 39, of Brookline
- Mitchell Rubenstein, 74, of Chestnut Hill
- Marshall Berenson, 62, of Cambridge
- Harmanpreet Singh, 38, of Woburn
- Kenneth Posco, 69, of Fitchburg
- George Wu, 58, of Needham
- Patrick C. Enright, 63, of Wakefield
- Suren Chelian, 47, of Lexington
- Sankara S. Asapu, 40, of Malden
- John Cascarano, 61, of Hingham
Cambridge District Court Clerk Sharon Casey oversaw most of Friday’s hearings. The court moved to file charges against all of the men on Friday. The probable cause hearing for an East Bridgewater man was continued to April 25.
If the men who are summonsed to court do not appear in court at a later date, they will face arrest, Casey has said repeatedly during the public hearings.
Last Friday, 11 alleged brothel customers from Massachusetts and New Hampshire were identified:
- Steven Riel, of Laconia, New Hampshire
- Nathaniel Welch, of Concord, Massachusetts
- Jeff Henry, of Exeter, New Hampshire
- Fred Rosenthal, of Marblehead, Massachusetts
- Timothy Ackerson, of Waltham, Massachusetts
- Matthew Fulton, of Belmont, Massachusetts
- Howard Redmond, of Tewksbury, Massachusetts
- Anurag Bajpayee, of Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Paul Toner, of Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Paul Grant, of Charlestown, Massachusetts
- James Cusack Jr., of Boston, Massachusetts
On Friday, March 14, the names of a dozen accused sex buyers from communities including Winchester, Lincoln, Concord, Newton, and Waltham were made public:
- Jonathan Lanfear, of Winchester
- Patrick Walsh, of Swampscott
- Pinhao Chao, of Newton
- David LaCava, of Waltham
- Jason Han, of Concord
- John Doran, of Wellesley
- Pablo Domingo Maceira, of Roslindale
- Peter MacGillivray, of Boston
- Yihong Zou, of Boston
- Boya Zhou, of West Roxbury
- Kerry Wu, of Natick
- Mark Zhu, of Lincoln
The attorneys for the Boston-area “John Does” identified in the black books of the sophisticated interstate high-end brothel network have desperately tried to keep their identities private, arguing that revealing their names violates their privacy.
In 2023, then-acting Boston U.S. Attorney Josh Levy said the clientele of the brothels included politicians, big pharma executives, government contractors with security clearances, professors, lawyers, accountants, and scientists.
A pair of Boston-based media outlets had filed to view criminal complaints against the alleged clients of a prostitution ring, however, the SJC also sided with the clerk’s decision to keep the complaints sealed until the first show-cause hearings are held in Cambridge District Court.
In November 2023, authorities arrested Han Lee, Junmyung Lee, and James Lee on charges of running a commercial sex network in Watertown, Cambridge, and Virginia, where buyers paid up to $600 per hour for a wide array of advertised sex acts.
Han Lee, the 42-year-old leader interstate commercial sex ring, was sentenced earlier this week to four years in prison followed by one year of supervised release.
“Han Lee didn’t just recruit women to sell their bodies for sex – she built a criminal enterprise designed to thrive in the shadows, evading law enforcement while profiting off her victims like commodities,” U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said.
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