Vice raid on last Dallas Design District massage parlor reaches Southlake's popular Dragon House - The Dallas Morning News

Jade Spa, it’s called. Or, the Hawaii Spa.

Signs for both are affixed to and planted in the parking lot of the squat, beige, windowless building sandwiched between a Days Inn and popular eateries Rodeo Goat and Ferris Wheelers. It has been there, along Market Center Boulevard, for more than a decade, so long you no longer even notice it when you drive past. Just, you know, part of the scenery.

“A little atmosphere,” says restaurateur Shannon Wynne, owner of the Goat. “A curiosity.”

Except everyone knows what goes on inside the place that garners high marks on the website called Rubmaps. And now, finally, what police believe to be the last of the Design District’s longtime massage parlors is closed, at least temporarily. It was shuttered by Dallas police and prosecutors who descended on the Jade Spa early Wednesday morning, when it was still dark and the cold rain fell in sheets.

But Wednesday’s operation was not confined to the Dallas city limits. Some officers left from DPD headquarters around 5 in the morning heading to Irving, Grapevine, Arlington, Carrollton – cities in which police say Jade Spa’s property owners and business managers live. What began as another massage parlor take-down, months ago, escalated once investigators began digging into the financials behind one of Dallas longest-operating brothels.

A Dallas Police vice officer takes photos of the outside of Jade Spa, a lucrative massage parlor raided on Market Center Boulevard near the Hilton Anatole Wednesday morning.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

Which is why Wednesday morning’s raid also resulted in the closing of one of Southlake’s most popular and best-reviewed Chinese restaurants – Dragon House. Cops allege the restaurant is “directly tied to Jade Spa’s owners,” cops said Wednesday. Same management, alleges DPD, same money.

In all, six men and women were arrested, each charged with promoting prostitution and engaging in organized criminal activity. Not one of those arrested included the young women living inside the Jade Spa.

“This is significant – the biggest operation since re-establishing vice,” said Maj. Max Geron, who oversees DPD’s Criminal Investigations Bureau. We were standing inside the Jade Spa, near a shrine containing a statue of a Buddha and sticks of incense. The place smelled vaguely of mold, probably from one of the shower rooms.

Vice cops have busted up about a dozen similar operations since the unit was reconstituted in January – usually in the northwest part of town, along Walnut Hill and Royal lanes near Harry Hines Boulevard, where the selling of sex is just one long-standing industry among many. The routine is now routine: Officers go in with warrants and come out with workers who live on the property.

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In the case of the Jade Spa, seven women were confined to a single room, on thin mats placed atop tattered sheets of Owens Corning insulation.

A steel metal door with a door bell is pictured inside the front door of Jade Spa, which was raided and closed Wednesday by Dallas police and prosecutors.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

Their belongings were stashed in a room that used to serve as the Jade Spa’s sauna, six pieces of luggage piled high next to a discarded ATM. Another bag was stashed in a back room filled with gallons of Listerine and lotion.

The workers were escorted outside, without cuffs; then, interviewed by police; then, introduced to service providers offering shelter and support. If they declined the offer, the women were given their phones and bags and told they were free to go.

“They are not the main source of the problem,” Geron said. “It’s the business owners and the investors that facilitate and run these operations. It would get us absolutely nowhere to prosecute the women living inside these buildings. In fact, it would do more harm than good. We choose to invest our limited resources in taking down those who are profiting off of them. They’re the ones living in nice condos. They’re the once living in the suburbs with large homes. They’re not the ones sleeping with customers, sleeping on insulation.”

Vice cops have always known about the Jade Spa. One of the undercover officers out on Wednesday’s operation said he made his first arrest as a Dallas cop here – “like, a decade ago.” But that was when Dallas police treated workers like criminals. “Before we knew about trafficking.”

And for years they let it be. Because they didn’t have enough cops to shutter all the massage parlors in town. Not then. Definitely not now. Not with just 12 vice cops.

The ride at next-door Ferris Wheelers overlooks the Jade Spa, and the camper where police found a man who claimed to be the spa's maintenance man.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

But according to the search warrant affidavit, police started receiving complaints about the Jade Spa earlier this year. Cops said Wednesday it was just a matter of time before they turned their attention back to the building that sits along a stretch of recently built apartments and low-rent and high-end hotels, including the Hilton Anatole, offering no shortage of clients.

Undercover operations, conducted from June to October, only confirmed what they always knew. Inside the Jade Spa, anything goes, so long as a customer has $150 and an hour.

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But as investigators began digging into the Jade Spa’s financials, they discovered a “detailed, complex, and large criminal enterprise,” according to an affidavit. “Although the operation is an illicit one, it is still operated and structured like a true business.”

Investigators say they watched drivers carry money from the Jade Spa to Dragon House, and that bank records show proceeds from both establishments were kept in a single account. Police said Wednesday they also executed search warrants at several local banks. In a press release, the department said “approximately $370,000 related to the criminal operation was seized and/or frozen.”

A 48-year-old woman Dallas police allege helped operate the Jade Spa was taken into custody Wednesday morning.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

Court records do not yet show the attorneys for those taken into custody. The phone at Dragon House went unanswered.

Wednesday afternoon, city attorneys went to the county courthouse and got District Court Judge Maricela Moore to close down the Jade Spa – at least until a hearing in mid-November. Since the raid on the Number One spa earlier this month, community prosecutors now accompany vice cops on these operations – then go directly to court, to padlock places that historically reopened once the warrants were executed.

“Oh, my God, we couldn’t even believe the city was turning a blind eye to this last hold-out,” Wynne said Wednesday.

The owner of Rodeo Goat said he has tried for years to buy the building – for parking, if nothing else. And always he’s been told no. I called some of the surrounding property owners and leasing agents, and nobody wanted to talk on the record. Except Wynne, whose Meddlesome Moth sits less than half a mile away.

“Because,” he said, “I am elated it’s going away.”

Finally. For now.

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