Looking for a traditional tattoo in metro Detroit? Lee knows how to do it, but he may not be someone you’d want to get tattooed by.
“Lee” is actually Alex Boyko, a metro Detroit tattoo artist who was arrested on sexual misconduct charges in 2019. He’s now operating his own shop in Livonia at 28913 W. Seven Mile Rd. under the moniker Lee Knows How.
An LLC with the same name is registered to Boyko, according to the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs. Lee is Boyko’s middle name.
Boyko has been charged with three counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, and a jury trial is set to begin on Aug. 21.
In 2018, dozens of women who said they had been tattooed by Boyko took to social media to out his inappropriate behavior, which allegedly ranged from sending videos of himself masturbating to “forcing himself inside” a client. Anonymous screenshots with stories about Boyko were compiled on Tumblr and Facebook posts, most of which have since been deleted.
One woman who began collecting the screenshots and sharing them on social media told Jezebel “at least 200 women” had come forward detailing disgusting encounters with Boyko.
“He would very aggressively come on to me, stare at my body in really pointed ways, and grab my ass and touch me while I was getting work done,” one of the alleged victims told Jezebel in 2018. “One time he tried to put his hand down my pants and grab my vagina, all while I was on his bench. He tried to corner me in the bathroom, said that he wanted to have sex with me and have me suck his dick, and that I’d get a discount if I did it.”
Despite the sheer number of stories that have been circulated about Boyko, the charges stem from one incident, which allegedly occurred around April or March of 2015 at Red Anchor Tattoo in Plymouth.
In court transcripts from a preliminary examination, the victim recounts Boyko allegedly fondling her breasts after having her remove her shirt and bra to trace the area for a sternum tattoo.
She had come in after shop hours.
“I asked him what he was doing and he said something like he was goofing off,” the woman said. “And then he reached out and he pinched my left nipple.”
The woman stated she didn’t report the incident to the police until 2019 because she just wanted to push it out of her mind. Boyko and the woman had a mutual friend who lived in the same apartment building as her and she “didn’t want the confrontation.”
However, as the woman testified in the preliminary examination, around 2017 allegations about Boyko began circulating online. At that time, the woman tweeted, “This is so fucked up. I’m just so grateful for all the times I’ve been alone with him. He never tried anything.”
The woman explained in court that she made the tweet because she didn’t want anybody to know about her encounter with Boyko.
“I wasn’t really sure that it was just me or not at this time,” she testified. “I wasn’t really sure whether it was a big deal to just me or if I was, you know, if I was feeling more sensitive than I should have.”
But in 2019, after her friends posted about similar encounters with Boyko, the woman decided to press charges.
“I felt stupid and I felt upset that this had happened to my friends as well and none of us knew,” she said.
Red Anchor Tattoo is no longer in business, and the former owner did not respond to our request for comment.
Boyko has pleaded not guilty on all counts.
We left several messages with the office of Boyko’s attorney Vassal Johnson that went unanswered. Boyko, however, responded to our interview request with the following statement:
“The last metro times article about me sucked lol not only was it parroting another shitty journalistic report, it was out dated, filled with misinformation, biased and straight up written poorly. Instead of trying to get views and shares using my name and a shitty click bait headline, maybe write an article about false police reports, a man intentionally weaponizing the controversy of rape, and about how falsifying reports undoubtedly hurts real victims. I have absolutely no interest in speaking to a journalist looking to get press using some almost 6 year old social media cancel culture bullshit. You’re welcome.”
Metro Times published one previous story about Boyko in 2019 following his arrest. (Boyko never contacted Metro Times with any corrections to the article.)
Boyko also appeared to make light of the allegations on Instagram. One image posted to his Instagram Stories in January shows a woman being tattooed by a man who is reaching around her waist from behind accompanied by the text, “All women need a handler to be tattooed by me. Sorry.”
As part of his bond, Boyko is not to perform tattoos on female clients without adult supervision.
In another post, he seemingly pokes fun at social media accounts alerting people to “call the police” and “google him” before getting tattooed by him.
Boyko sued three Detroit-area tattoo artists for defamation in 2018 after they shared stories from women accusing him of sexual harassment on social media. The case was dismissed, which Boyko successfully appealed — only for the case to be dismissed again by the same judge in 2021.
Metro Times reached out to one of those artists, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of being sued again.
“What I really care about is that survivors are healing and that the public as well as artists are aware of what is acceptable behavior in a professional body art studio,” they said via email. “It’s most important to me that young people understand that tattoo artists don’t have the right to touch you in a sexually suggestive or overtly sexual way. We have to touch our clients in order to tattoo them and place a stencil. Sometimes we have to photograph someone so we can draw an adornment for the area of the body they want us to tattoo. But no artist should be making sexual comments or advances of any kind towards clients.”
After the incident at Red Anchor that led to the charges against him, Boyko worked at Sun House tattoo shop in Detroit in 2016. Sun House has since closed but a former employee says Boyko was fired after someone complained about him.
The employee agreed to discuss Boyko’s employment on the condition that his full name not be used.
“It was one of the other guys’ clients saying that they didn’t want to book an appointment if he was there,” Matt L., who says he worked at Sun House with Boyko, tells Metro Times.
Matt says there was no shop manager at Sun House and that he and his colleagues took Boyko on a trial basis.
“I’ve known him from a distance since we were in high school,” Matt says. “He kind of had a bad reputation in the metal and hardcore music scene but I didn’t know too much about him and then he contacted me to have a new place to work. Because I did have some previous knowledge of him being flirtatious… we had a policy, me and the other guys… we said that if anybody ever came to us and said they didn’t want to get tattooed while Alex is there, then we would fire him.”
When asked to clarify what he means by Boyko being “flirtatious,” he says, “after he would tattoo [a woman], he might, like, contact them on Instagram or something like that.”
Though Matt says he now regrets letting Boyko work at Sun House, he initially gave him the spot because he “felt bad for him.”
“I guess I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt because knowing him before tattooing, he was not well-liked and I guess that’s kind of a foolish thing for me not to just go along with that feeling,” he says. “He wasn’t a person that you could walk into another tattoo shop with and they would want to say hi to him. He was just sort of like, public enemy number one for tattooers.”
When asked why Boyko’s case has taken so long to go to trial, Wayne County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney and communications director Maria Miller offered the following response:
“Why has this taken so long? This case is a misdemeanor. [Boyko] is a defendant on bond. Due to COVID-19 many cases are backed up. The serious felony cases where defendants are incarcerated take precedence.”
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