Police did not launch an investigation into Korea Spa because the man declined to press charges, but the business shut down earlier this month after the City Council Finance Committee issued a cease-and-desist order. The business is one of four massage parlors the city has shut down since July through such an order, due to failure to comply with business regulations. Some of the businesses were operating without a current license, or didn’t pass an inspection by city staff.

City and state officials say cracking down on illicit activity at massage businesses is more effective at the administrative level than tackling the problem through the criminal justice system.

It’s the “Al Capone approach,” Santa Fe Planning and Land Use Director Heather Lamboy said in an interview last year, referring to the famous mobster’s eventual conviction on income tax evasion charges.

Staff at the land use department believe 15 to 20 businesses in Santa Fe are currently operating as illicit massage parlors, she said this week. Her agency is preparing a proposed ordinance for the City Council to consider later this year to give more teeth to the administrative process aimed at shutting them down.

New Mexico lawmakers considered a measure during their 30-day session that was also intended to provide more stringent oversight of massage businesses, with a goal of weeding out those operating illegally or offering illicit services. But Senate Bill 246 failed to make it across the finish line.

It passed the Senate and the House Health and Human Services Committee with just one day to get a vote on the House floor. That never happened.

Lamboy previously worked for the city of Aurora, Colo., and said the proposed Santa Fe ordinance is modeled on legislation spearheaded by Aurora’s licensing department, which has proven successful.

The upcoming measure, which Lamboy said will be one of the first updates in the second phase of the city’s ongoing land use code rewrite, would require massage businesses to provide additional information to the city about their state licensing and to abide by specific standards, such as keeping their doors unlocked during business hours.

Locked doors during advertised business hours — with people inside — caught the attention of land use staff during inspections at several of the massage businesses that later faced cease-and-desist orders from the Finance Committee. Inspectors also cited violations such as expired business licenses and employees on-site who did not have a valid license as a massage therapist.

The Finance Committee has the sole power at the city to revoke business licenses, according to city code — a power Lamboy said it has exercised very rarely before it began targeting out-of-compliance massage parlors: “I don’t know the last time it’s been used,” she said.

To date the city has issued cease-and-desist orders to the following businesses:

• Good Luck Body Massage, 360 E. Palace Ave., July 28.
• Chinese Massage LLC, 4985 Airport Road, Unit B, Oct. 27.
• Yang Yang Massage/Pony Massage, 1225 S. St. Francis Drive, Unit E, Dec. 8.
• Korea Spa, 2008 Rosina St., Unit B, Feb. 9.

The owner of Korea Spa is the only business owner who has come to a Finance Committee hearing to protest a decision. Lamboy said owners of other massage businesses appear to have closed their doors as soon as they were notified the city was preparing to issue a cease-and-desist order.

“It’s sort of like a whack-a-mole type of situation,” Lamboy acknowledged. “They’ll move on to other places, but, at least within our local jurisdiction, they won’t be permitted.”

Santa Fe police Sgt. Dianna Conklin said building a criminal case against massage parlor operators based on suspicions of human trafficking is “really difficult,” partly because potential victims — frequently immigrant women — are uncooperative with an investigation.

Massage parlor workers often rely on the business for housing and money, Conklin noted.

Reports to police about suspected trafficking or illegal services could yield petty misdemeanor charges against women offering such services, but turning those cases into investigations against their supervisors — the people who run the parlors — is trickier.

“We can go in there, we can do a sting and we have, basically, the offender, who is probably a victim of human trafficking — and then what?” Conklin said. “Then, what we do from there — we’re going to wind up charging her and trying to leverage her to flip on somebody, and … they’re not going to.”

Conklin has worked in the Santa Fe Police Department’s Special Victims Unit for several years, and in that time she has seen just two reports alleging prostitution at massage parlors. In both cases, a man alleged a masseuse had offered to perform sex acts during a massage.

One man told officers in June 2025 he had visited Pony Massage on St. Francis Drive, and the masseuse had offered oral sex and intercourse while she was massaging him, a police report states.

The man declined, he told police, but the woman continued to touch his genitals. When he told her he was planning to call police about the incident, the woman threatened to tell officers he had forced her to touch him inappropriately, he said, according to the report.

The man said he didn’t wish to press charges, but the incident made him feel “very uncomfortable,” and he wanted police to know what was going on at the parlor, police wrote.

The second report, made against Korea Spa on Rosina Street, came three months later.

Conklin’s unit has a handful of officers, and several are planning to attend a conference this year to learn more about investigating massage parlors, she said, adding some other law enforcement agencies have had more success approaching suspected human trafficking organizations through racketeering or organized crime cases — focusing on tax evasion or other types of offenses that can lead to a business shutdown.

“We want to stop human trafficking at the top,” Conklin said. “We don’t want to go after the people who are having to prostitute themselves to survive; we want to actually get the people who are facilitating the services, and get the victims into a safe place where they can feel like they actually have a chance to live the American dream, instead of just being trafficked indefinitely.”

New Mexico officials have aimed for years to try a regulatory approach to scrutinize massage businesses that could be offering illicit services.

The latest effort came through SB 246, which would have expanded the state’s authority to regulate massage businesses by creating a new license category for the business operations — not just the individual therapists who work in them.

It also would have allowed state investigators to conduct in-person visits, a power they currently lack.

Melissa Salazar, director of the Boards and Commissions Division of the state Regulation and Licensing Department, said the bill would have put New Mexico alongside Florida, Texas, Delaware and Nebraska by having state authorities regulating both licensure and inspections of massage establishments.

The department, with Salazar helping to craft the bill, had introduced a nearly identical bill during the prior year’s regular legislative session, which died after only one committee hearing.

“The number one priority is to ensure that health, safety and ethical risks are being assessed,” she said.

A secondary goal, she added, was sharing information with law enforcement when inspectors suspect wrongdoing.

“But … it would not be the RLD’s responsibility to go in and do something about that. They would work in conjunction with law enforcement if they noticed something that was odd or different,” she said.

She noted roadblocks for police when it comes to investigating such businesses: Police typically need search warrants and probable cause to enter an establishment and often rely on rare reports; most people who encounter illicit activity at a massage parlor never report their concerns to police, she said.

SB 246 would have granted the state Massage Therapy Board, a five-seat commission of governor appointees, expanded authority to vet massage establishments and set rules governing licensure and inspections. The board would have had the power to deny or revoke a license based on unprofessional or unethical conduct or prior convictions.

Sen. Pat Woods, a Broadview Republican who co-sponsored the bill, said his support for the measure came after a media report of allegations against a Clovis massage parlor in his district.

“I know good and dang well there’s places advertised out there,” Woods said. “Local police, they do their best to train people to watch. I’m sure that it’s a constant job for them to watch out for that kind of thing.”

Woods said SB 246 was also intended to protect legitimate massage businesses and their clients.

“There’s legitimate people trying to make a legitimate living,” he said. “ The state should help them do that — so the people that need that treatment aren’t afraid they’re gonna walk into something more than what they think they’re walking into.”

The bill ran into opposition over language allowing inspections of massage establishments “at any time,” including outside business hours.

Because the proposal did not distinguish home-based businesses, critics argued it would have allowed inspectors to enter a residence at any hour.

Woods said it was too late in the session to amend the language. He may bring back another version in a future session.

“It’s not that we’re gonna stop all prostitution by any means,” Woods said. “But, you know, we have a way to regulate this, so that’s what we should do.”