Of course the brass knew about them and and the troops were warned, because this kind of game is common around all military bases. Lonely men are the target of a lot of scams. When I deployed overseas they used to warn us about the dangerous parts of town and made them off limits to American service personnel. Of course those were the places we went to right away when we had the chance because we were young men and danger equals fun. A lot of my comrades thought that I was weird because I wanted to see stuff like the Pantheon and the Acropolis. Whenever you see a prostitute a pimp is involved 100% of the time, but most of the b-girls I encountered appeared to be independent contractors, like strippers.