Police: York County spa was a house of prostitution; woman charged - York Daily Record

[Mike Argento]

On Sept. 14, 2024, a man called Carroll Township Police and reported that he had been offered sexual favors while receiving a massage at the Yilian Spa on York Road.

The man allegedly told police that he declined the offer, prompting the employee to abruptly end the session.

That tip led to an investigation that ended with a 60-year-old woman from Flushing, N.Y., named Xiumei Wang being charged with racketeering and other offenses associated with operating a house of prostitution, according to a criminal complaint filed last week.

After receiving the tip, according to the complaint, police did some research and learned that the small, ranch-style house on a rural highway just north of Dillsburg was a brothel. Checking a website that listed reviews of Asian massage parlors, police found 17 reviews of the services offered at Yilian Spa, all but one indicating that employees performed sexual acts in exchange for money.

Several customers reported that the employees did not speak English and referred to a chart of services to negotiate the exchange, Carroll Township Police Officer Ben Martin wrote in the criminal complaint. The most current review – which described sexual acts – was posted on Nov. 22, 2024.

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Police surveilled the spa around the clock for a week and reported that between five and 10 customers, all men, visited the spa each day. Customers, the officers reported, typically spent between 20 minutes to an hour in the spa. They observed two women working at the spa. The women, they reported, appeared to be living in the house, as they never left and did not have access to a car.

A search of the spa’s trash revealed six used condoms, four torn and empty condom wrappers and an empty tube of topical medication used to treat herpes and other skin diseases, Martin wrote in the complaint.

The owner of the building told investigators that he leased the building to a woman who told him that she was handing over operation of the business to Wang. Until November 2024, the owner told police, the rent was paid in cash. That month, he told police he insisted on being paid by check, which Wang did from an account assigned to Yilian Spa.

The owner said he could only communicate with the women using Google Translate to translate Mandarin Chinese into English, according to the complaint.

At 9 a.m. on Dec. 20, 2024, police executed a search warrant at the spa.

As they conducted the search – which revealed more than $6,000 in cash stashed in different locations, six cell phones, bank documents and prescription creams and medication prescribed to treat sexually transmitted diseases – a male customer was in the spa. He told officers that he had visited the spa the week before and received sexual services for $70. He “advised that today he was there expecting the same but did not get time (due) to the search warrant being conducted,” Martin wrote.

The search also revealed that the two women who worked at the spa appeared to be living in the building, Martin wrote.

According to court records, Wang is still awaiting arraignment on the charges.

Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a York Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at [email protected].