An Asian sex worker is found beaten and strangled. Briscoe and Green discover that her name was Lorraine Shelby and she ran a massage parlor staffed by victims of sex trafficking - who are all found in a shipping container. Hidden camera footage from the massage parlor shows that a cop named Tony Renato planted false evidence during a raid. Renato admits that Lorraine was using the footage to blackmail him. He says she wanted protection from a webcamming client who had threatened her, but Renato knows nothing about the internet so couldn't help.
It turns out that the threats came from 15-year-old Kevin Malone. He is arrested but the judge rules the transcripts of his chats with Lorraine inadmissible. Kevin spent up to 10 hours a day talking to her online and had run up over $50,000 on his parents' credit cards. The case will be difficult to prosecute because internet addiction isn't a documented phenomenon. But then Carmichael discovers that Kevin's father wrote to the credit card companies to find out who the money went to. Lorraine believed Kevin to be an adult and encouraged him to visit her at the massage parlor, so his father could have got the address from Kevin's messages.
Mr. Malone's alibi proves false, and forensic evidence puts him at the scene. He is charged with murder. At trial, he says all he could find out about Lorraine was a shipping address for her business. He says he just wanted to ask her to stop contacting Kevin. McCoy points out the many glaring holes in this story, but the jury is swayed by Malone's description of the extent of Kevin's addiction and what Lorraine's actions did to their family. Ultimately, McCoy agrees to a sentence for Manslaughter 1. He is unhappy that Malone will serve a maximum twelve years for the murder. Carmichael later reports that the trafficked women have all applied for asylum in the USA.
Tropes present in this episode
- Asshole Victim: Considering the victim was the madam of a massage parlor that used sex slaves who were kept in a shipping container when not working, she definitely qualifies. Kevin's attorney also tries to invoke this by calling the victim "a greedy hooker".
- Even Bad Women Love Their Mamas: It's mentioned that even though Lorraine's parents disinherited her because of her behavior, she still paid for a lavish funeral when her mother died.
- Hopeless with Tech: Renato knows nothing about the internet and couldn't help Lorraine with Kevin because he has no idea how chatting online works.
- Outliving One's Offspring: The victim's father is alive throughout the episode.
- Predatory Prostitute: The victim was involved in sex trafficking and had Chinese women living in a storage trailer. When Kevin Malone, a teenage boy, becomes obsessed with her, he puts his family into debt.
