DUBLIN — After six years, two men have been sentenced for their roles in operating a lucrative sex trafficking ring in the Tri-Valley area, which converted apartments into brothels and laundered money.
Qiwei Liu, 32, and Zheng Xu, 35, have pleaded no contest to various charges, with Liu accepting a conviction of false imprisonment of a sex worker, and Xu accepting a conviction of accessory after the fact. At a court hearing this month, the deal was finalized with both defendants scheduled to return to court in January for formal sentencing.
Liu will receive a 180-day sentence, while Xu will be sentenced to a year of house arrest. Liu was brought into custody and will remain there until the January court date, and both will be sentenced to probation after their sentences are complete, court records show.
The plea deal resolves a case that has been hanging in the balance since 2018, when the pair were arrested and charged in a 20-count criminal complaint, accusing them of pimping, pandering, money laundering and conspiracy to commit a felony.
Authorities said in court records that the sex trafficking ring operated out of at least two locations in Dublin — the Sofi apartments on San Ramon Road, and the Sierra Apartments on Dougherty Road. Both units were converted into brothels.
They attracted potential clients with online ads and laundered tens of thousands in proceeds. Authorities tracked cash deposits totaling $100,000 that they believe were sex trafficking proceeds, and say about $87,000 of that was laundered during a one-year period from 2017 to 2018, according to court records.
Police also identified at least two women as human trafficking victims, according to court records. One of them was seen leaving the Dougherty Road brothel with Liu in 2017. When police pulled Liu over and questioned him, he claimed the woman was his girlfriend, but the same woman was later present during a police raid on the brothel and authorities determined she was being trafficked, according to the charging documents.
The San Ramon Road apartment building was raided by police in a separate investigation in 2016, involving a unit that had been converted into a brothel there. In that case, police accused a man and a woman with operating six brothels around the Bay Area.
Originally Published:
