“She requested payment up front and tried negotiating a tip, starting at 40 percent, but I requested she keep it at 20 percent. The one-woman show, mixed with the strange negotiations of service and payment, made me uneasy,” the teen explained. Once Kodsi was on the table, the worker received “half a dozen calls” during the first 20 minutes from a man she said was inebriated and “begging for an appointment,” and about halfway through the massage, the man burst into the room and demanded services in slurred speech. According to recent data, for every Starbucks that’s in the five boroughs, there are at least two illicit massage businesses (IMBs). “She told him to wait in the street and he left to go back downstairs. It was very clear to me at that point that this particular parlor had gained a reputation amongst men looking for a certain attention late at night,” Kodsi said. Kodsi’s mother, Rachel Foster, is the co-founder of the anti-trafficking group World Without Exploitation - so the teen grew up learning about what the sex trade looks like and helped start the group’s youth coalition. “When I was in the space, it took me a moment but then I quickly connected the dots,” Kodsi said. Matthew Kodsi (right) went to Ming Happy Spa not realizing it was a brothel and was asked if he was looking for anything else besides a massage.
