Singaporean woman lands on US 'worst of the worst' list for running prostitution ring

A Singaporean woman convicted of promoting prostitution at a chain of massage parlors in Washington state is the third citizen of the city-state named on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's "worst of the worst criminal aliens" list.

Jing Emtage, 54, is being held at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Northwest processing center in Tacoma, Washington state, according to The Straits Times.

ICE's Seattle office said on social media in August that she was awaiting deportation proceedings, the newspaper said.

She was sentenced on July 25, 2025, to 38 months in prison for seven counts of second-degree promoting prostitution, Washington state newspaper Kent Reporter reported. Her husband, Gerald Emtage, received the same sentence on June 13, 2025.

Both also received 12-month terms for money laundering, and an original charge of leading organized crime was removed under a plea agreement.

The King County Sheriff's Office arrested the couple on May 2, 2023, after an investigation that began in January 2021 with a community member's complaint about a massage parlor, Seattle broadcaster KIRO 7 reported.

Detectives traced the operation to nine massage businesses in four Washington counties and seized more than $600,000 in cash, KIRO 7 said, citing the sheriff's office. Officers also rescued 23 women identified as trafficking victims.

Prosecutors said in charging documents that the couple made "significant profits" from the commercial sexual exploitation of dozens of women.

Jing Emtage in a photo published on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's 'Worst of the Worst' website. Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Homeland Security

The women slept and ate in the buildings where they provided sexual services while the Emtages lived in a home valued at more than $1 million, the documents said.

The couple moved more than $1 million through their bank accounts, and there were no state records of wages paid to the women, prosecutors said.

Emtage ran a massage therapy business in Singapore before moving to the U.S. in January 2018 and married her husband in December 2019, according to her sentencing memorandum, cited by Kent Reporter.

The memorandum, which sought a lighter sentence, said the couple's massage business was doing well until the Covid-19 pandemic, when financial losses led them to offer illegal services.

The "worst of the worst criminal aliens" list was launched in December 2025 to catalog "criminal illegal aliens" arrested since the start of President Donald Trump's second term. It now has 46,275 names.