A Queens couple tricked South Korean women into coming to America by promising them jobs, then forced them into prostitution to pay for their travel to the United States, prosecutors said.
Jung Ja and Eric Ornstein brought two women to the U.S. with the promise of a lucrative job at a bar and restaurant, then told their victims on arrival the arrangement had changed — they’d be having sex with strangers instead, prosecutors said.
One of the victims reached out to the authorities after the couple tried to extort her for more money, and that led to an investigation that resulted in a 18-count sex trafficking indictment against the couple, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced Thursday.
One victim arrived in New York in 2015 and met Jung Ja Ornstein at Kennedy Airport.
Ornstein took the woman’s passport from her.
They then coerced her into having sex with strangers over the next two years to pay off her $10,000 debt to them, investigators say. Finally, in 2017, the Ornsteins returned the victim’s passport and left her alone.
Investigators soon learned of a second victim who answered a similar ad in 2001. That victim’s $10,000 travel debt was “purchased” by a woman who made her work in a massage parlor, and she was eventually forced to work for the Ornsteins.
Every time the second victim wanted to leave, Jung Ja Ornstein terrorized her with threats like “You have to work, You owe money. You think I won’t find you?” prosecutors said.
Eric Ornstein would often blow his top and start breaking things when he felt the victims didn’t make the couple enough money, and walked around carrying a metal pipe, prosecutors said.
In 2017, the second victim was told her debt was paid and also got her passport back. But about three years later, around 2020, the Ornsteins found her again and told her she still owed them cash. Panicked, the woman handed over $8,500 of her savings to them, prosecutors said.
Their defense lawyer, Christopher Cassar, said the victims conspired to set up Jung Ja Ornstein, after stealing from the couple in 2017, back when they lived in the couple’s basement apartment.
He said the Ornsteins met one of the women in their home, and a male friend attacked Jung Ja Ornstein.
The Ornsteins pressed charges against the assault suspect, but later declined to pursue the case after getting “death threats from the Korean mafia,” Cassar said.
Cassar said the sex trafficking allegations were revenge for that arrest.
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