OAKLAND COUNTY, Mich. \u2013 Images inside local massage businesses in Oakland County are exposing an underworld of human trafficking going on in our neighborhoods and strip malls.<\/p>\n
Those images were among many other items introduced on Friday at a meeting to stop human trafficking targeting specialty businesses in Oakland County.<\/p>\n
The point of the meeting was to set up a system to better shut down illegal massage spas, save the lives of the women who are being trafficked, and clean up our communities.<\/p>\n
Police call them IBMs \u2014 illicit massage businesses. <\/p>\n
They operate under the cover of a legitimate business to provide commercial sex acts to customers.<\/p>\n
One Thai massage spa on 10 Mile Road in Novi was recently shut down. <\/p>\n
Its location: between a preschool and a family ice cream shop.<\/p>\n
Photographs from inside some of the busted businesses show what life is like for the women forced to work and sometimes live there \u2014 cramped into small rooms and basements, with their trafficker controlling their every move.<\/p>\n
The goal of the meeting on Aug. 14 was to share what the Oakland County Human Trafficking Task Force has accomplished so far.<\/p>\n
29 suspected illicit massage businesses in Oakland County advertise on a paid sex forum site<\/p>\n
45 citizen complaints filed<\/p>\n
16 search warrants executed<\/p>\n
21 undercover operations conducted<\/p>\n
74 phones seized<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been trafficked here. They don\u2019t have transportation. They don\u2019t have a place to live. They live in these small businesses, sometimes in strip malls,\u201d Prosecutor McDonald said. \u201cThe important thing here is they\u2019re right in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
McDonald said property owners are part of the solution. \u201cA lot of the people who own these properties might not even be aware that this is going on,\u201d she said. \u201cThe start is abatement letters \u2014 letting the business owner and the property owner know this is going on, we know what\u2019s going on. And then if they don\u2019t respond or leave or cease, they can use local ordinances to shut them down.\u201d<\/p>\n
A similar tactic used in other counties resulted in 55% of illicit businesses shutting down the moment they received abatement letters.<\/p>\n
Authorities are also targeting those who pay for the illegal activity. \u201cWe are holding accountable the business owners for all sorts of things, because there\u2019s a lot of criminal activity that takes place. And then we\u2019re also holding accountable people who go into these places and pay for that,\u201d McDonald said.<\/p>\n
Additional steps include business and licensing reviews, since in many cases the women working in these massage spaces are not licensed.<\/p>\n
Sharing information across jurisdictions is also part of the plan.<\/p>\n
Auburn Hills and Waterford were specifically mentioned for their aggressive approach to combating this crime in their communities.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OAKLAND COUNTY, Mich. \u2013 Images inside local massage businesses in Oakland County are exposing an underworld of human…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[33347,327,143,904,145,144],"class_list":["post-433265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-investigates","tag-investigators","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-county","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}