Several women busted in the sweeping Florida massage-parlor sting that snagged Patriots owner Robert Kraft came from China to Flushing to get licensed and learn the illicit sex trade, cops say.
Florida police believe workers at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter — where the 77-year-old billionaire allegedly paid for sexual services — and other parlors nailed in the probe are part of a bustling New York-to-South Florida pipeline.
Lan Yun Ma, who ran a parlor in Vero Beach, employed women from the Queens neighborhood and once lived a five-minute walk from its 40th Road red-light district, police said.
She has been charged with human trafficking in the Florida investigation.
Ma also faced trafficking counts in Oxford, Mass., in 2012, when “three Asian females were rescued from indentured sexual servitude,” according to a report.
She previously lived around the corner from the slim strip of 40th Road in Flushing where eight brothels operate and where Post reporters were openly solicited.
Lixia Zhu — who was hit with racketeering and money-laundering counts after a raid at the Therapy Spa in Stuart — got her massage license in Flushing, Lt. Mike Dougherty of the Martin County Sheriff’s office told The Post.
He said at least a half-dozen other women arrested there told cops that they had worked in Flushing.
“The one thing they have in common is home base is in Flushing, New York,” Dougherty said. “It’s the first point these women hit. That’s where they are getting documents.”
He said a criminal-defense lawyer from New York flew in last week to represent Zhu, who immigrated a decade ago and also worked in Chicago, Atlanta and Massachusetts.
“We were super concerned with that,” Dougherty said.
“If this is what we think and the tentacles reach organized crime outside this country, how is this attorney showing up who has no real connection to her? Is he trying to quiet her up?”
The federal Department of Homeland Security is investigating the web of organized crime and prostitution that stretches from China through Flushing and Florida, Dougherty said, including whether massage workers were in the US illegally.
He said Zhu’s Florida rub-and-tug joints moved “incredible amounts of money” through China.
Investigators are probing whether Zhu and other workers are victims of human trafficking, he said.
Kraft was among nearly 300 men charged with prostitution-related crimes in the massage-parlor sting.
He pleaded not guilty Thursday to two charges of soliciting prostitution.