Two arrested after undercover operation at Goochland County spa
Deputies arrested two people at Jasmin Spa in Manakin-Sabot after a covert investigation at the Hockett Road business. One county post identified Jie Hong Chen, 48, and a charge of keeping a bawdy place.
Two people were arrested after Goochland County sheriff’s deputies carried out an undercover operation at Jasmin Spa on Hockett Road, turning a quiet-looking business in Manakin-Sabot into the center of a public-safety investigation.
The Goochland County Sheriff’s Office had been looking at the spa at 1587 Hockett Rd. for some time before deputies moved in the morning of Tuesday, April 21, 2026. During the operation, authorities said an individual associated with the business engaged in a lewd act, the kind of allegation that suggests investigators believed they had enough evidence to make arrests rather than simply issue a warning.
The sheriff’s office later said the case resulted in two arrests. A county social media post identified one suspect as Jie Hong Chen, 48, of Flushing, New York, and said Chen was charged with keeping a bawdy place. Another account of the operation described one arrest and one detention and said deputies also obtained a search warrant, indicating the investigation was still developing after the initial sweep.
For Goochland County residents, the case lands squarely in the overlap between public safety and business oversight. Jasmin Spa sat in a commercial area of Manakin-Sabot, not in a place typically associated with a major law-enforcement response, which is part of what makes undercover work significant: it is often used when authorities believe illegal activity may be hidden behind an ordinary storefront.
The sheriff’s office has not publicly laid out the full scope of what deputies found inside the spa or whether more charges are expected. But the combination of a long-running investigation, an undercover visit, and a search warrant points to a case that was built methodically, not on a single tip or a routine inspection.
The Hockett Road address now sits at the center of a wider question for Goochland County: how quickly illegal activity can take root inside a business that looks routine from the outside, and how much enforcement work is needed before it is exposed.
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