Many organized Eurasian criminals specialize in exploiting young Eurasian women for the sex trade. Attorney General Harvey described what he called “human slavery”:
… where young women are enticed from Europe and elsewhere to come to the United States on the pretense that they’re going to be nannies, on the pretense that they’re going to go to school, on the pretense that they’re going to work in hotels and have legitimate jobs, when, in fact, what the aim is to get them in the United States, using false identification, to put them in strip clubs and other prostitution venues and to exploit them with the threat that their family members in another country will be harmed if they don’t comply with the demands of the persons who imported them into this country.

Lieutenant Walter Zalisko, Commander of the Policy and Planning Bureau of the Jersey City Police Department and the founder of a police management-consulting firm, PMC International, is fluent in Ukrainian and Russian. He has developed a particular interest in the trafficking of Ukrainian and Russian women for the sex trade in New Jersey and elsewhere and has spoken to scores of victims of this activity. He testified at the public hearing that so-called “white slavery” rings “have thrived on the exploitation of woman and children from developing countries for years. Lieutenant Zalisko pointed out that activity here and abroad, by deported participants, contributes to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases – citing a 600 percent increase in HIV cases in Ukraine alone in the last two years. He added:
Young Asian women have been commodities for decades. However, rising unemployment, poverty and a weakened social structure have caused the newly independent countries, Ukraine and Russia in particular, to become the latest targets for the recruitment of women and children into sexual slavery and as indentured servants. According to the U.S. State Department, Russia and  Ukraine are among the main source countries from which women are exported and exploited. Trafficking in women is a form of modern day slavery. When a woman is trafficked, she’s exploited, she’s denied the most basic human rights, and in worst case, she’s denied her right to life. These women are recruited, managed and transported by Russian organized crime syndicates into the United States and other countries and used primarily as sex slaves, go-go dancers and indentured household workers.

Lieutenant Zalisko testified that prostitution and trafficking in human beings earns Russian organized crime $7 billion a year worldwide, its third largest source of profit behind trafficking in drugs and weapons. He described how a woman from a Slavic country, such as Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Belorussia, Bosnia or Berzegovina, becomes a victim:
It begins with an ad in the newspaper or an unexpected chance meeting on the street with the proposition to work abroad as a maid, a secretary, a showgirl, a nanny or a waitress. The recruitment ad that appeared in a village newspaper in Ukraine reads, “Seek pretty woman, under age 30, slender, educated, to work in modern office setting, $600 a month, documents and transportation provided.” They frequently lure them with promises of high paying jobs and marriage.

Although the concept of trafficking is rather straightforward, the methods employed by the traffickers are varied and reflect ingenuity in attempting to thwart detection by law enforcement. The women are often provided with fraudulent visas and passports and then taken to their destination country. Upon arrival the women will be informed that the job that was promised for them has been taken by someone else because it took [them] too long to get [there]. In the interim, she has to continue to repay the agents who provided for her transportation, ... anywhere between $3,000 and $20,000 and sometimes more. The reason for the large gap in the fee that's paid to traffickers is [differences in the directness of the route]. … [If] she’s flown right into New York, the fee traditionally is lower because it doesn't involve paying off different people.

 I was in Uzgorod, Ukraine, which is right on the border of Hungary, and we witnessed … literally thousands of women being brought in from Russia and Ukraine, being housed in … safe houses while they [plan] their travels to other countries. … The agents wind up paying off the Ukrainian border guards and the Hungary border guards. And then once she’s in Hungary, they travel to Budapest, and from there on to different countries. So theoretically, she can go from Ukraine to Hungary to Italy to Germany, and then ultimately to New York. And that’s where the $20,000 dollars comes in, because there are more people to pay off. Nina Karpacheva, the head of the Ukrainian Parliament’s Commission on Human Rights, states that up to 85 percent of Ukrainian women involved in prostitution abroad are forced into this business against their will. She said that thousands of Ukrainian women have been turned into white slaves in many countries, in particular Greece, Turkey, the United States, Israel, Germany and the Netherlands.

Lieutenant Zalisko contended that approximately 45,000 to 50,000 women are trafficked annually to the United States, about 7,000 to 8,000 arriving in the New York/New Jersey area. Approximately 4,000 are forced to work in New Jersey as indentured servants or in various go-go bars, “juice” bars (strip clubs), escort services and massage parlors. Women have been beaten and even murdered for trying to escape their handlers in the sex trade.

Lieutenant Zalisko testified that his language skills enabled him to interview more than 800 women who were being exploited after arriving in this area. He described their dilemma:
… I’d say three-quarters of them claim that they came here for another job, and they wound up being forced into becoming either a go-go girl or a prostitute. Many have left families back home, including small children, their husbands and other [family members]. What’s interesting … [is] the women are  highly educated. I have spoken with women who are doctors, lawyers, nurses, dentists [and] economists. It’s just that they’re so desperate to leave their countries to find jobs in other countries. And I think that's one of the problems is that they’re so desperate that when they wind up coming here, they’re forced into it. They figured, well, I have to continue working under these conditions.

We were asking them how do they get their visas. Most indicated that they were here either on a student visa or a tourist visa. … [A]nd these women just overstay their visas. And then you have the problem … that because they’ve overstayed their visas, the traffickers or their agents or caretakers, who watch over these women, tell them, … “Well, you can't go to the police, because now you're here illegally. They're going to put you in jail if they catch you, and then they're going to deport you. And if we get you, then we'll kill you.” …

Not all trafficked women wind up as go-go dancers or prostitutes. Many of them find themselves in jobs that we might believe are perfectly legitimate. The job itself may be legitimate, but the conditions that these women work under are not. In most cases, the woman's passport is taken away, and she’s not permitted contact with the outside world. Wages are typically below minimum. She’s provided no medical benefits, and most often she’s required to work at least 18 hours a day. And here we’re talking about indentured servants. I have interviewed a number of women in Monmouth, Middlesex, Essex, Bergen and Morris counties, the more affluent counties, where people tend to hire Slavic women for these types of jobs.

…[In] Monmouth County, not too long ago, … a Russian woman [was] living with [a couple] and [the man] was raping her when his wife was not home. … [H]e forbade her to go out shopping unless she was escorted by the wife. And this is a typical scenario of what happens to indentured servants. … It should be noted that not all women are trafficked for sexual exploitation. Many are traded for marriage [or] as domestic help [or as] factory workers.

Lieutenant Zalisko noted that often police departments do not know how to recognize or deal with the human trafficking problems they encounter within their  jurisdictions. He described how a superficial approach by law enforcement does little to remedy the serious plight of the victims:
When [police] have information on a massage parlor or a go-go bar, and they find women dancing in there, … they'll just lock up the owner for promoting prostitution and … the girls for prostitution. … But they could have had … more, enforced prostitution, trafficking and so forth. That’s why I think it's important that [when] New Jersey law [enforcers investigate] an incident like prostitution [involving] Slavic women, … Oriental women and other ethnic groups, … they … find out … whether … [the women] are doing this willingly [and ensure] that the government will protect them. There are laws on the books that do protect these women if they come forward and are willing to testify.

What we’ve noticed is that the women are primarily [brought in by van] from the Brighton Beach area of New York. You'll get five to ten of them into a van, and they’re taken into New Jersey and dropped off at various strip clubs.

[A] woman can earn anywhere [from] $1,000 to $2,000 dollars a night, depending on the bar itself and how well she performs. She will have to return 80 percent of her earnings to the … caretaker who is responsible for her. And she'll keep 20 percent … . And yet she still has to pay $50 to the driver who would bring her from Staten Island or Brooklyn into New Jersey. I have followed these vans to numerous clubs in Essex County, Morris County and even into Pennsylvania. … [A]s far as physical abuse, the Russian organized [criminal] has a habit of beating women. … They kick them in their kidneys, punch them in their kidneys. That inflicts tremendous pain, and the women are still able to be physically attractive to perform for them.

Lieutenant Zalisko noted that more and more of these woman, and children in some cases, are appearing in New Jersey. He recalled encountering a young Ukrainian girl participating in a so-called “go-go-rama” at a Newark bar. Initially she claimed to be 18 years old, but she eventually admitted to being only 14. She said she came to America  on a student visa and her parents thought she was studying at “some kind of a high school … .” He helped her to contact the Ukrainian Embassy and added that “she was no longer dancing in the Newark area after that.” Lieutenant Zalisko described how the authorities should be able to handle such cases to avoid a vicious cycle of exploitation:
…[I]f the women are arrested or detained, [they] should be interviewed by local authorities and given viable alternatives to deportation in exchange for evidence against traffickers. At present, they are often just fed back into the system [by] being returned to their country of origin. What needs to be done is to remove the women from the sphere of influence of the crime group, which will ultimately create a severe financial loss for [it]. And continue to do so until you make trafficking an unprofitable business and increase the risk of prosecution. Lieutenant Zalisko said it was not uncommon for victims to fall through the existing safety net.