‘Get Paid to Have Your Feet Worshipped’: Feds Say the Job Ad Was Bait for Rape

The pitch sat in the “Employment” section of FootPadNYC.com, a foot-fetish website that called itself “the Foot Pad”: aspiring foot models could “get paid to have your feet worshipped.” According to a federal indictment unsealed this week in Manhattan, the job ad was the front end of a trap. Prosecutors allege the site’s owner, Jason Khan, 47, used those promised modeling gigs to lure women to “interviews” in Manhattan hotel rooms between 2019 and 2021 — and then raped or sexually assaulted at least three of them.

Khan, who splits his time between Albany and Manhattan, was arrested on the morning of June 8, 2026, in the Albany area and presented the same afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jennifer E. Willisin the Southern District of New York. He is charged with three counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion — one count per alleged victim — and each count carries a 15-year mandatory minimum and a maximum of life in prison. He is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty; every fact in the government’s account is, at this stage, an allegation.

The case lands in the office — SDNY’s Civil Rights Unit — that prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell and Lawrence Ray, and it leans on a legal theory federal prosecutors have already proven they can win with: fraudulent modeling recruitment as the “fraud” in sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion. The FBI says its investigation is ongoing and is actively asking additional victims to come forward.

• 3 counts — of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion — one per alleged victim, per the unsealed indictment · Source: DOJ SDNY Release 26-161
• 15 years to life — the sentencing range on each count: a 15-year mandatory minimum, maximum life imprisonment · Source: DOJ SDNY
• 2019–2021 — the years FootPadNYC.com's 'Employment' section allegedly recruited aspiring foot models into hotel-room 'interviews' · Source: indictment, S.D.N.Y.
• 27 years — the sentence GirlsDoPorn owner Michael Pratt drew in 2025 on the same fraud-luring trafficking theory — the precedent that frames this case · Source: DOJ S.D. Cal.

The indictment, unsealed in Manhattan federal court, charges Khan under the federal sex-trafficking statute — the law that covers commercial sex induced by force, fraud, or coercion. According to the government, FootPadNYC.com operated from at least 2019 through 2021 and maintained an “Employment” section that recruited women with the promise of paid foot-modeling work. Prosecutors allege Khan “and others working with him” scheduled “interviews” with respondents — sessions that were held not at an office or a studio, but in Manhattan hotel rooms.

“On at least three occasions, KHAN deployed this playbook,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in its release — and in each instance, the government alleges, the woman “expressed her lack of consent… but her non-consent was ignored.” Two of the three alleged victims underwent rape kits at hospitals afterward, according to the release. U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton announced the charges alongside FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle, Jr. and NYPD Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch. Khan’s detention status was not announced in the public release, and this page does not assert one.

“As alleged, Jason Khan lured his victims in under the lucrative promise of being a foot model, before he repeatedly and violently sexually assaulted and raped them.”

U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton · S.D.N.Y. · June 9, 2026

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What makes this a federal trafficking case rather than a state rape case is the architecture the indictment describes. The government’s theory is not that the alleged victims were kidnapped — it is that they were defrauded into the room. The website supplied the legitimacy: a real business, a real niche market, a plausible “Employment” page. The promised income supplied the lure. The hotel-room “interview” supplied the isolation. Under the federal sex-trafficking statute, a commercial-sex scheme built on that kind of fraud — or on force or coercion once the door closed — is trafficking, even with no border crossed and no pimp-and-victim structure in the usual sense.

The DOJ release describes the same alleged sequence each time: a respondent to the ad, an “interview” scheduled in a Manhattan hotel room by Khan “and others working with him,” and an assault in which the woman’s stated refusal was ignored. Who the “others” are, and whether any of them face charges, is not stated in the release — one of several threads the ongoing investigation leaves open. The case was investigated by the FBI-NYPD Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force and FBI Albany, with an assist from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office; Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sam Adelsberg, Lisa Daniels, and Remy Grosbard of SDNY’s Civil Rights Unit are prosecuting.

“This defendant lured women to hotel rooms under the false pretense of offering employment opportunities, and then raped and sexually assaulted them.”

NYPD Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch · June 9, 2026

Federal prosecutors have run this exact theory to a verdict before — and to a long sentence. On September 8, 2025, Michael Pratt, the owner of the GirlsDoPorn website, was sentenced in the Southern District of California to 27 years in federal prison for sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion. The scheme’s engine was the same one alleged here: fake modeling advertisements. Pratt’s operation lured hundreds of young women with ads promising legitimate clothed modeling work, then coerced them on arrival. Pratt was ordered to pay roughly $76 million in restitution to his victims; his co-conspirator Ruben Garcia drew 20 years.

The Pratt case settled, as a matter of courtroom record, that “fraud” in the federal sex-trafficking statute reaches the job ad itself — that deceiving a woman about what a paid gig actually is can make everything that follows trafficking. That is the doctrinal ground the Khan indictment stands on, and it is why the charging decision came out of SDNY’s Civil Rights Unit, the same office that convicted Ghislaine Maxwell and the college-cult predator Lawrence Ray. None of which decides this case: Pratt was convicted on his facts, and Khan is presumed innocent on his. The precedent tells you what the statute can do, not what a jury will find here.

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One more piece of the record, reported by the New York Post and attributed to police accounts: Khan was arrested in Manhattan in 2019, accused of luring a blind woman to an Upper West Side hotel where police said she was given “a green gummy” and raped. That case was later sealed, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. A sealed case is not a conviction — it establishes nothing about guilt, and it plays no formal role in the federal indictment. It is reported here solely because the Post’s account places a prior, similar accusation in the public record, on the Post’s and the police’s authority, not the government’s.

The federal case stands or falls on its own three counts. What the 2019 episode does illuminate is why the FBI is canvassing so publicly for additional victims: the indictment alleges a repeatable playbook run “on at least three occasions,” and the phrase “at least” is doing deliberate work. Investigators plainly believe the universe of respondents to FootPadNYC.com’s employment page may be larger than three.

The government is treating this as an open case in every sense. The FBI has stood up a dedicated tip line at 212-384-2700, a dedicated inbox at JasonKhanVictims@fbi.gov, and a web questionnaire for potential victims — the same victim-outreach machinery the Bureau deploys when it suspects a charged pattern extends beyond the counts in hand. The investigating agencies span two districts: the FBI-NYPD Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force in the city, plus FBI Albany near where Khan was arrested, with the Manhattan DA’s office assisting.

Clayton’s release leaned hard on the outreach. “We commend the victims for their courage in coming forward,” he said, urging “anyone else who has been a victim of Khan, or knows anything about his alleged crimes” to contact the Bureau. The stakes of each additional substantiated victim are not abstract: under the charged statute, every count is its own 15-to-life exposure.

“We commend the victims for their courage in coming forward, and we urge anyone else who has been a victim of Khan, or knows anything about his alleged crimes, to do the same. Our investigation is ongoing.”

U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton · June 9, 2026

Strip away the tabloid-ready details and this is a straightforward, serious federal trafficking case built on a theory with a recent, decisive courtroom record. The government alleges a business’s job listings were an instrument of fraud, that the fraud delivered women into hotel rooms, and that what happened in those rooms was rape — three times that prosecutors can currently prove, by their own account, and possibly more. The GirlsDoPorn prosecutions showed that juries will convict on the fraud-luring theory and that judges will sentence at the top of the range: 27 years for the owner, 20 for a lieutenant, $76 million in restitution.

For Khan, the math is unforgiving if the government proves its case: three counts, each with a 15-year floor and a life ceiling. For now he is an accused man with the full presumption of innocence, awaiting the adversarial process that will test every one of these allegations. The variable that could reshape the case before trial is the FBI’s open canvass — “at least three occasions” is the indictment’s phrasing, and the Bureau’s tip line is an open invitation to revise that number upward. We will update this page as the case develops.

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Last updated June 10, 2026