Sev­en peo­ple in metro Den­ver used mas­sage par­lors to run a sophis­ti­cat­ed pros­ti­tu­tion oper­a­tion that net­ted mil­lions of dol­lars to finance ille­gal mar­i­jua­na grows, accord­ing to an indict­ment released Thurs­day by the Den­ver Dis­trict Attorney’s Office.

The sev­en indi­vid­u­als, indict­ed on 33 felony counts, are accused of “engag­ing in a pat­tern of rack­e­teer­ing in which the mas­sage par­lors were the nexus for run­ning a com­plex pimp­ing, pros­ti­tu­tion, mon­ey laun­der­ing and tax eva­sion oper­a­tion that gen­er­at­ed mil­lions of dol­lars,” the DA’s office said in a news release.

“We believe that the defen­dants were hid­ing in plain sight as they traf­ficked women from Chi­na to engage in sex acts with cus­tomers of their mas­sage busi­ness­es,” Beth McCann, Denver’s Dis­trict Attor­ney, said in a statement.

The alleged offens­es took place across the metro area, includ­ing Den­ver, Dou­glas, Ara­pa­hoe and Jef­fer­son coun­ties, accord­ing to the indict­ment. The orga­ni­za­tion also had prop­er­ty and did busi­ness in Steam­boat Springs as well as Cal­i­for­nia, Okla­homa and Louisiana.

The sev­en defen­dants will be tried in Den­ver Dis­trict Court:

• Chen Liang Kuo, 45
• Yi Ting Mo, 42
• Man­qui Xu, 57
• Le Zhang, 46
• Ying Guo, 49
• Xiong Xie, 54
• Xuelin Chen, 33

The inves­ti­ga­tion began in ear­ly 2019, when Auro­ra offi­cials told the Den­ver DA’s office that illic­it mas­sage par­lors they shut down in Auro­ra had pos­si­bly reopened in Den­ver, the dis­trict attorney’s office said.

The inves­ti­ga­tion led author­i­ties to shut down Den­ver Apple Spa, Tulip Spa, 21 Spa, Mojo Mas­sage, Ocean Foot Mas­sage and oth­er businesses.

Under­cov­er offi­cers nego­ti­at­ed deals with mas­sage par­lor employ­ees for sex­u­al inter­course and oth­er sex­u­al acts, accord­ing to the indictment.

When author­i­ties raid­ed the apart­ment of an indi­vid­ual whose name was redact­ed in the indict­ment, they alleged­ly found a series of writ­ten trans­la­tions from Chi­nese to Eng­lish for the phrase “do you have a hap­py end­ing?” the court doc­u­ment read.

In Jan­u­ary, two women told inves­ti­ga­tors that they pay $14 a day to live inside Apple Spa, accord­ing to the indictment.

“The crim­i­nal enter­prise extend­ed across the Front Range and prof­it­ed off of the exploita­tion of vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple,” Attor­ney Gen­er­al Phil Weis­er said in a state­ment. “From our inves­ti­ga­tion, we also tracked crim­i­nal pro­ceeds through a net­work of bank accounts to sup­port the mon­ey laun­der­ing charges in the indict­ment. Fur­ther­more, ille­gal­ly oper­at­ed grow hous­es divert­ed rev­enue from the state.”

All but two of the traf­fick­ers have been arrest­ed as part of this oper­a­tion, Jason Dunn, the U.S. Attor­ney for Col­orado, said in the news release.