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Alleged sex-slave traders caught in Sanchung

A man and woman accused of having tricked young women into working as prostitutes in Japan were arrested in Taipei County early yesterday, police said.

Lee Shih-min (李世民), 40 and his girlfriend, Lee Hsiu-chu (李秀珠), 27, were nabbed in an apartment in Sanchung, Taipei County, around midnight, police said, adding that a batch of passports of alleged victims and money-transfer receipts were also seized.

Police said Lee colluded with a Taiwanese-born woman, Chang Feng-li (張鳳莉), who is a naturalized Japanese citizen, to run a human-smuggling and sex-trade ring whose operations spanned both sides of the Taiwan Strait, Japan and the US.

An estimated 100 Taiwanese women are believed to have fallen victim to the ring, police said.

At the moment, police said, six Taiwanese women are still stranded in Yamanashi Prefecture, central Japan, because their passports are being held by gangsters.

Police said they are seeking the assistance of Taiwan's representative office in Japan and Japanese police to rescue the six.

Police said they have been tracking the ring's activities since receiving a distress call late last year from a Taiwanese woman in Japan. The woman was later rescued with the assistance of Taiwan's representative office in Tokyo and Japanese police.

Lee, who has a record of fraud, forgery and offenses related to the anti-child prostitution law, allegedly used the alias "Chen Kuo-hsing" to run advertisements in Chinese-language newspapers to lure young women to work at restaurants in Japan.

Once the women arrived in Japan, police said, their passports and air tickets would be confiscated and their actions would be restricted.

They would then be forced into prostitution. If they wanted to return home, they had to ask their families to remit money to the ring as ransom.

According to police, Chang -- whose Japanese name is Keiko Inoue -- is the ringleader of the gang. She remains at large in Japan.

Police said they are investigating whether Lee has other accomplices in this country.
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