Suffolk clerk ends lease at St. James spa tied to sex work claims

Suffolk County Clerk Vincent Puleo ended the lease on a St. James foot spa after the Lake Avenue business drew complaints, investigator attention and online reviews tied to sexual services. The move put a county official’s private property under the same glare now following massage parlors across Long Island.

The business, K&T Foot Spa, had signs neighbors and investigators associated with illicit sex work, and reporters observed it for 10 hours over three days while seeing only men enter and leave. The spa also had no massage license. After that scrutiny became public, Puleo terminated the lease on the property he owns, turning a local landlord decision into a question of what a public official knew, when he knew it and how much disclosure a county clerk should owe the public when a business on his property is linked to trouble.

Puleo has worked in public office for nearly two decades, and his office is one that Suffolk residents use for property and court records, including home sales, mortgages, liens, judgments and tax matters. The county’s online records system says it contains imaging for about 2.5 million documents, a scale that makes the clerk’s role central to land records and transparency. That connection gives the St. James lease more weight than an ordinary commercial dispute: the owner of a property tied to sex-work claims is also the county’s top records official.

The case lands in the middle of a larger enforcement push on Long Island. Police have raided nearly 240 massage spas in the past five years, 85 of them more than once, and arrests tied to those cases are up more than 1,200%. On June 25, Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney announced indictments involving 10 people and four corporations in an alleged prostitution and illegal massage-business enterprise tied to four Long Island parlors. Search warrants at those parlors and related residences turned up cash and gold bars.

Suffolk police have also stepped up local actions. On June 1, officers raided Topture Spa on Middle Country Road, leading to an arrest and a cease-and-desist order after community complaints. On May 14, police in Huntington arrested a woman they said had already been arrested in earlier spa prostitution cases. Against that backdrop, the shutdown of the St. James lease is part of a countywide pattern in which strip-mall massage businesses, neighborhood complaints and criminal allegations keep colliding with public trust.