Johns named in fancy-brothel case

and inadmissible at trial.  Are the pimps going to testify in exchange for a deal?  Seems that would be misplaced prosecutorial priorities. 

The phone texts could possibly be authenticated but might need testimony from Verizon etc plus police.

Kraft was a victim of an egregious scheme in which police installed cameras in a massage parlor without a warrant. 

No old guy like Kraft getting a happy ending in a massage parlor is going to jail rich or poor, so no he did not buy his freedom.  None of these guys are going to jail, on a plea most it will be is "continued without a finding" pending dismissal.

"Human trafficking" is 95% a bullshit construct invented by religious authoritarians and carceral feminists to punish men for consensual conduct.

I saw a lot of prostitution cases go through Boston district courts. Streetwalkers are usually desperate addicts controlled only by their addiction.  Escorts are free agents doing it for the prospect of large sums of money in short periods of time.  Very few escorts were prosecuted, only in police stings.  I never saw a case in which women were confined and coerced to work in premises.  I sometimes saw traveling bands of prostitutes with a pimp who would post the low bail and then they all would leave the state.

In a case before the Supreme Judicial Court now, they're trying to convict guys caught up in a police sting for human trafficking.  Since cops were posing as prostitutes, there was no actual coercion.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown has written extensively on the subject for Reason magazine.

https://reason.com/2025/01/13/massachusetts-court-...

Labeling people who want to pay a willing adult for sex as sex traffickers is certainly unfair to those people, and not just because they can be imprisoned for so much longer. It's one thing to have a misdemeanor arrest on your record or to have to disclose a solicitation conviction; it's quite another to have a felony record and have to tell people you're a convicted sex trafficker.

And the negative consequences of this shift don't stop with those convicted. Defining all prostitution as sex trafficking threatens to drive the industry further underground and to make customers less likely to engage in screening protocols and other safety measures, making the work more dangerous for adult sex workers and for adult and minor victims of sexual exploitation alike.

It also takes resources away from fighting crimes where there are actual victims, instead encouraging cops and prosecutors to conduct sure-thing stings where the only "victim" is an undercover cop.

And it does all this while letting authorities ratchet up sex trafficking arrest and conviction numbers, confusing the issue by conflating two very different things in public data. This spike in arrests and convictions can then be used to stoke public fear and build demand for more action. It's can be used to justify raising police budgets, expanding surveillance power, suppressing online speech, and generally calling for more tough-on-crime policies. It can also be used to call for new regulations on businesses as diverse as massage parlors, hotels, and social media platforms.