Only case to go to jury trial

By Fritz Busch

Staff Writer

NEW ULM – After about an hour of deliberation Friday, a four-man and two-woman jury found a Washington man not guilty of gross misdemeanor and misdemeanor prostitution in a public place in Brown County District Court.

Charges were dismissed against Sambo Min, 51, Bothell, Wash. He was charged in October in a two-day sex sting that netted seven suspects in New Ulm and St. Peter. The sting was conducted by the Brown and Nicollet County Sheriff’s departments and New Ulm, St. Peter, and Mankato Police.

Law enforcement agencies targeted individuals responding to ads they placed on Backpage.com and Craigslist websites for the purpose of soliciting sex. A female undercover officer assisted in the stings.

The charges said that Sambo agreed to pay for sex acts after communication via text messages and/or phone calls for a set fee and drove to New Ulm from La Crosse, Wis., with the intention of having a sexual encounter with a woman. He was arrested at a local hotel and the exact fee was found on his person.

Nicollet County Sheriff’s Department Investigator Marc Chadderdon, who testified at the jury trial, said the jury “apparently assumed there wasn’t enough evidence to define a sex act.”

“That’s all I can assume,” he said. “All our evidence was sent to them, and that’s all we can do. When we have what we believe is an agreement for a sex act, we arrest the suspect when he gets to the (motel) room.”

Chadderdon said the evidence against Min were text messages.

“He (Min) claimed a language barrier,” Chadderdon added. “This is the first case we lost, and the only jury trial we had, after arresting 50 people in the last 18 months. Some guys pled guilty, others are still in the court system.”

“The jury did what it should do. We don’t have any hard feelings against anybody,” said Brown County Sheriff’s Office Senior Investigator Jeff Hohensee. “What we keep in mind is officer safety during these operations. We erred on the side of caution, not collecting as much evidence as we otherwise would have because there are people in the (hotel) room that we didn’t know.”

Assistant Brown County Attorney Breck Rolfsrud, and Bloomington attorney Christina Zauhar agreed that the jury did its job as it should. Min said he was thankful for the work Zauhar did in the case.

From November 2014 to October 2015, 48 people were arrested for prostitution in Brown, Nicollet, and Blue Earth counties.

“The problem is statewide. We are attempting to address it in local communities,” read a Nicollet County Sheriff’s Office press release. “The number of arrests dropped slightly with each operation, but we received calls and text messages from more than 100 different people on Oct. 8, 2015.”

Last July, prostitution sting operations in New Ulm and St. Peter netted 13 suspects. Chadderdon said stings were conducted after area law enforcement attended training sessions in the Twin Cities.

“The phones were extremely busy. There were numerous other suspects that showed interest,” Hohensee said.

Sting operations were made possible by the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota Girls Are Not For Sale grant written by Mankato Department of Public Safety Director Tom Roether. The Brown and Nicollet County Attorney Offices assisted in the investigation and processed formal charges.

Fritz Busch can be e-mailed at fbusch@nujournal.com.