It’s a family affair.
A pair of business-savvy sisters — allegedly running a prostitution ring along the “Market of Sweethearts” in Corona, Queens exposed by The Post last week — is using the court system against landlords trying to boot their brothels, opening one as quickly as another is shut down, according to court records.
Fengye Wu and her sister Feng Xia Wu have sued at least three landlords in Queens Supreme and Civil Courts after the landlords tried to kick the seedy bordellos out of their buildings.
The landlords were drained of thousands in legal fees while fighting in court, and they ultimately lost — one brothel was allowed to keep operating, and the other building was forced to shut down completely.
Inchul Chang, whose family owns a three-floor property off Roosevelt Avenue near Junction Boulevard, told The Post he could not have predicted the problems he was inviting into his building when Feng Xia Wu, 53, moved in in February — and can’t get rid of her or do anything stop the flow of apparent prostitutes and johns in and out of his building.
“She seemed nice enough. Frankly she looked like my mother, similar age, so I’m like, ‘You know, she doesn’t look like someone running a prostitution ring,” Chang told The Post.
About a month into the lease, he recalled, he started getting complaints from tenants that Wu was operating an apparent brothel, despite a clause in the lease — attached to court papers — specifying “no sex work on premises.”
Chang and his realtor checked on the claims and were invited in by scantily-clad women out front. He was horrified to discover a woman having sex behind a curtain, and bedroom stalls filled with lubricants, mouthwash and “mountains of condoms,” he said.
Chang gathered evidence by taking videos and photographs showing rows and rows of condom-covered beds — and even one alleged hooker serving a john.
He tried to get the police to intervene, to no avail, and eventually put a lock on the door — only to discover it cut off the following days.
Wu responded by suing Chang at the end of June for trying to lock her out, and a judge ordered him to let her stay in the building while they await a trial, records show.
In text messages attached as evidence in the case, Wu did not deny that prostitution was occurring but instead said she fired those responsible.
Chang said the alleged brothel is still operating — despite the camera he set up in plain sight at its entrance.
Meanwhile, he is out $10,000 to $15,000 in legal fees while his other legit tenants may soon leave.
“I have to get them out otherwise the whole building dies,” he said. “All I know is I’m stuck with these people and I have all the evidence in the world and I can’t evict them.”
As Feng Xia Wu’s case against Chang dragged on, her sister, Fengye Wu, was running the same scheme at another building, according to an eviction lawsuit a landlord filed against her and a nuisance abatement lawsuit filed by the Queens District Attorney.
Fengye Wu, 55, operated Sunny Beauty Club, an alleged front for a brothel that secretly operated in the back of a cell phone shop on Roosevelt Avenue.
The landlord successfully evicted her through the courts in March, according to records.
But Wu turned around and sued the landlord in May in Queens Supreme Court for locking her out of the building. That case is ongoing, while Fengye Wu simultaneously operated a second brothel down the block, according to the Queens District Attorney.
In June, the second landlord filed to evict Sunny Beauty Club from his building on Roosevelt Avenue, claiming she was running a prostitution ring. That building was shut down by the Queens DA through nuisance abatement for prostitution last month, according to the petition filed by the prosecutor.
“[Fengye] Wu is nuts, for anyone to be doing what [she’s] doing, it’s kind of crazy,” said a rep for one of the businesses Wu operated from. “The landlords are victims because they have no knowledge of this until after the fact.”
“Closing the place isn’t the answer, it’s getting to the principles of these businesses — not the onsite manager, not the people who work there, but the people who are opening these businesses. That’s the only way you’re going to stop it.”
Neither Fengye Wu, her sister, nor the lawyer who has represented them both responded to requests for comment.
It’s not just the sister act that ‘Sweetheart’ landlords have to worry about.
Another landlord claims he rented space in Corona to people who said they were opening an acupuncture clinic — only to launch a brothel downstairs from his own daughter’s apartment.
The seedy tenants at the 95th Street property — who aggressively solicited a Post reporter last week — remain, despite complaints the landlord has made to city officials.
After last week’s Post expose of the “Market of Sweethearts,” Mayor Adams vowed to clean up the red-light district and was “putting in place an operation to deal with the sex workers,” but did not provide details.
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