A 54-year-old Lahaina man is in custody at the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu pending his transfer to Minnesota to answer to federal sex trafficking charges.

Maui police and U.S. Department of Homeland Security investigators arrested Todd Vassey on Tuesday.

Vassey was in court Wednesday where his lawyer told U.S. Magistrate Judge Kenneth J. Mansfield that her client is not disputing that he is the same person named in a federal indictment in Minnesota but is asking for the opportunity to be released on bond pending his transfer. A bail hearing is scheduled for Friday.

A federal grand jury in Minnesota returned a secret indictment Sept. 27 charging Vassey and 16 others with trafficking women from Thailand and forcing them to work as prostitutes in Minnesota, Arizona, California, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, Texas and Washington, D.C. A federal judge in Saint Paul, Minn., unsealed the indictment late Tuesday following the arrests of most of the defendants.

The U.S. attorney in Minnesota said 12 of the defendants are Thai nationals and five, including Vassey, are U.S. citizens.

According to the indictment, Vassey and the other defendants are members of a sex trafficking organization that has brought hundreds of women from Bangkok to work as prostitutes in various U.S. cities since at least 2009. It says that at least four of the defendants are previous trafficking victims who rose within the organization to facilitate the trafficking of other women and the ongoing operations of the organization.

The indictment accuses Vassey of being one of the organization’s “runners,” who prevent women from getting away by escorting them any time they leave the houses of prostitution where they are forced to work. That could include escorting the women to and from the airport, on trips for personal items and to the bank to make deposits to pay off their bondage debt to traffickers. According to the indictment, runners may also be asked to rent hotel rooms, apartments or other facilities for the organization and may be paid in part with sex with the victims.

The Department of Homeland Security says in court records that Vassey has a Hawaii driver’s license. State court records suggest that Vassey has been a Hawaii resident since at least 2009.