Md. Firefighter Among Many Charged

By Dan Morse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 8, 2009

The arrest of a longtime Montgomery County firefighter on charges of soliciting sex from a minor was part of a broader online sting operation that netted at least 17 men from a variety of backgrounds, one of whom lives as far away as Ohio, Montgomery County police said Friday.

Police said the sting, which goes back to March, worked this way: Officers placed an advertisement on Craigslist purporting to offer sex. Men who responded were directed to MySpace, where they were told the woman was 16 years old. Police said the men continued their inquiries even after being told the age.

An attorney for four of the men said the operation has been aggressive and unfair because the men were lured with a photograph of an adult-looking woman. “They’re attacking people looking for normal sex, and they’re destroying lives,” said the attorney, Rebecca Nitkin.

In some cases, her clients didn’t realize they were communicating with a purported minor, Nitkin said. Those who did realize her age did not know it is illegal to arrange online for sex with a 16-year-old or thought the claim that she was a teenager was more of a “marketing” tool than reality, Nitkin said.

A police spokesman said the initial Craigslist site might not have disclosed the age. “There’s no 16-year-old area on Craigslist,” Lt. Paul Starks said.

In ensuing exchanges, either by e-mail or text messages, the officers clearly presented themselves as underage, police said.

The sting eventually apprehended men ranging in age from about 17 to 60, Starks said.

One of those charged was Lt. Wayne A. Mothershead, a Montgomery firefighter for more than 20 years. Police said he initiated contact at a Craigslist site and was referred by police to a MySpace page that indicated that the person was 16 years old.

Nitkin, who represents the firefighter, said there is insufficient evidence to prove the charges.

According to charging documents, Mothershead was taken into custody and admitted to police that he communicated “with a subject he believed to be a 16-year-old female for the purpose of prostitution.”

Nitkin said that of her three other clients, one pleaded guilty to marijuana charges and the soliciting charges were dropped. She said the other two have entered pleas of soliciting prostitution from an adult and await sentencing.

At her office Friday, Nitkin allowed one client to speak to a reporter on the condition that his name not be disclosed. The client, an engineer, said that after his initial Craigslist query, he learned that the subject of his interest claimed to be 16. “First I thought, ‘No good,’ ” he said.

Then he said he considered several things, among them that the person had to be older to have a credit card to set up an online presence, and concluded she was older.

By Abigail Goldman
Sun, Dec 14, 2008 (2 a.m.)

The pleasure of Stacie’s company used to cost $450 an hour, but no longer. Her clients were capped at 35 and older; today she’s taking almost anyone. Sex acts once off the menu are suddenly back on — recession specials, served with a side of shrugging compromise.

If she doesn’t do more for less, Stacie says, another prostitute will. And her weekly income is still down by half.

The illegal prostitution economy in Clark County is a multimillion-dollar beast fed by a black market so diverse that it’s impossible to pin down. On one hand, midrange prostitutes like Stacie say they’re being crippled by the economy. On the other, high-end call girls claim they’re not feeling much pain. And the women charging the least reportedly are making the most these days — counterintuitive in an industry where bargains come with risks.

Consider the work of sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh, who surveyed hundreds of high-end prostitutes in New York and discovered that 40 percent of “trades” in the sex economy never went beyond light petting or kissing.

In Las Vegas, the economy’s effect on call girls is even more complicated: The bulk of clients — or johns — here are from out of town, tourists or businessmen who spend days in convention halls and nights in hotel rooms with to-your-door entertainment. These men are bread and butter for local prostitutes, provided the clients come to town. And anybody in the hospitality industry — here that illicitly includes call girls too — can agree that fewer men are flying in, with less money to spend.

Meanwhile, more women reportedly are getting into the business, which creates a classic supply and demand squeeze. An escort agency owner told the Sun he’s getting about 40 interested applicants every day, the majority of whom are women running from the wreckage of lost finance jobs.

Now fold another factor into that dynamic: When the economy is bad, when people feel their mortgages closing in, they seek comfort: alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, pornography and perhaps prostitution.

When all these elements collide in the nebulous economy of escorting, a trend emerges: The Clark County call girl economy has a tipping point — about $650.

In Vegas, prostitutes who charge between $600 and $700 are being hit the hardest. The women (and the smaller number of men in the business) who charge in the $200 to $300 range are doing the same business as before, if not better, according to Susan Lopez, founder of the Sin City Alternative Professionals’ Association for local sex workers. And women who charge thousands of dollars for multi-hour appointments tell Lopez, and the Sun, that they’re not really being affected at all.

Although this is no scientific study — and people should be wary of any numbers that claim to definitively capture any element of the sex-for-pay market — the tipping point does make sense: People tightening their belts are downgrading to cheaper service; people who don’t need to tighten their belts aren’t really doing it at all. If you can buy a Bentley today, the logic goes, you’re probably going to be able to buy one tomorrow.

Or maybe you’ll buy an evening with Rebecca. She’s been a call girl in Las Vegas for several years, after leaving a job in finance behind. Winters are always slow, she says, but overall, the money is good. How good? Her best month was $32,000. An average month is more like $15,000.

“I get a lot of doctors and lawyers and they don’t even blink,” she said. “By January or February I’m fully expecting to raise my rates.”

Her rates, for now, are $2,000 to start. Overnights cost $4,000. Travel and multiple-day excursions are negotiable.

If you don’t believe people would pay that kind of money, consider the case of former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer, who authorities allege spent $80,000 on escorts in one year, despite having a lot more to lose than the cash.

Call girls difficult to count

Calculating Las Vegas’ call girl economy is, at best, a guessing game. Academics have estimated there are anywhere from 3,000 to 3,500 indoor working prostitutes in Las Vegas at any given time. Imagine, however, that only a fraction of them, say, 1,000, are working year-round. Now imagine that each sees only one client a day, and charges only $300. You still have an annual economy of $109.5 million. Imagine the number of working girls is even smaller — 500 prostitutes charging $250 a day. That’s still more than $45 million a year.

Trace our economy backward from bust to boom and you’ll hit the glory days that helped create the world of high-cost call girls. A glut of new millionaires, paired with a sex industry that seamlessly got online and off the streets, gave birth to agencies such as the Emperors Club — Spitzer’s alleged company of choice, where the cheapest dates still commanded $1,000 an hour.

Writing about this subject, The Wall Street Journal cited a study conducted by wealth research firm Prince & Associates, which surveyed 661 people rich enough to own private jets and found 34 percent of the men and 20 percent of the women had paid for sex. Now extend that group to people who are rich enough to own, say, a beach house, or a Porsche, or their own firm — and you get an idea of just how big the market could be.

Blogging on The Economist Web site, economist Allison Schrager notes that the prostitution market is countercyclical; less attractive and cheaper prostitutes, while available, aren’t always desirable. Prostitution, Schrager says, appears to be what’s called a “Giffen good” — a product for which demand rises with price.

Charging too little has dangers

When financial panic intrudes on the prostitution world, escorts often lower their rates in response, according to Amanda Brooks, author of the Internet Escorts Handbooks. That’s a mistake, she says, not just because established higher-end prostitutes are more immune to economic fluctuations, but because lowering rates changes the kind of clientele call girls attract.

Women who are getting into the industry for the first time also tend to price themselves too low, Brooks said, because they don’t understand that higher rates mean higher quality clients. There’s another side, too — the handful of prostitutes who Brooks says are taking on straight jobs to fill in the gaps between “dates.”

Women who price themselves at the tipping point, $600 or $700 for a few hours’ work, have “always had a difficult time. They’ve always been in a kind of limbo land, between the true high end and the rest,” she said. “Those girls are definitely feeling the crunch.”

For Stacie, who discounted her hourly rate by $100 or more, lowering costs also comes with increasing risks. She is forced to do more outcall work — going to clients’ rooms rather than the having them come to her hotel room, which makes her feel more vulnerable. She also agrees to a wider range of sex acts, which puts her at additional health risk.

“I can’t do this for too many years longer,” she said, “just until I save up enough.

“You always want to be safe, but you’re always lowering your standards.”

In the past, Stacie saved $1,000 a week — on top of the $5,000 she made and spent. Now she’s down to $3,000 and she’s not setting aside any money. Still, that’s an incredibly high salary for most people, which puts the working girls’ woes into context for others struggling with the bad economy.

Stacie and Rebecca, despite the difference in what they charge, are still part of what academics classify as the “indoor” sex trade — the vast majority of the illicit industry, though it’s largely invisible.

“Outdoor” sex workers, the stereotypical streetwalkers, are only 15 percent of the prostitution world, though they represent 85 to 90 percent of the vice arrests, according to a study by Venkatesh and “Freakonomics” author Steven Levitt, who found that street prostitutes in Chicago earn roughly $25 to $30 an hour.

How street prostitutes are faring in Las Vegas is unclear — even women with close ties to the industry, like Rebecca or Lopez, are so far removed from these prostitutes that they don’t know. None contacted by the Sun would agree to talk.

Women who work for escort services also face a strain that independents such as Stacie and Rebecca do not. The escort service charges a base fee of several hundred dollars, and it’s up to the escort to negotiate with the client on top of that — a tip determined upfront. One local escort, reflecting on the economy, said she knew things were getting bad when women who once would walk out of a room for anything less than a $1,500 tip were now hanging around for only a few hundred dollars.

But here’s the irony: When the economy is stable, women who charge midrange fees often end up making more money than call girls serving the high-end clientele, Lopez said. High-end call girl Rebecca makes $15,000 in an average month, but when times are good, Stacie, who charges midrange fees, can clear $25,000 — she just has to hustle much harder for it. It’s a trade-off that plays money against mental health and safety.

If the bad economy does anything to escorting, author Brooks figures, it will be this: Prostitutes will become better at marketing themselves.

“They going to be looking into Web sites, looking into blogging, getting a little more savvy about their marketing,” she said. “And the smart ones will compete for clients in a way that doesn’t impact the girls, not by lowering their prices and by giving more than they feel comfortable with, but by increasing their market savvy.”

One of those is Amber, a New York-based escort available for travel anywhere. She has been flown to Vegas a few times this year, by men who cover her expenses and pay about $5,000 on top of that.

“Vegas is very competitive, and you really feel it,” she said. “I’ve had to be a little more creative, a little more aggressive in my marketing.”

Even then, she added, “I travel the world, but I’m not living as lavishly as I was.”

]]> http://fantasyescortguide.com/cop-talk/usa-escorts/not-even-prostitution-is-immune-to-economics-of-supply-demand.htm/feed 1 http://fantasyescortguide.com/cop-talk/escort-industry/financial-crisis-tames-demand-for-world%e2%80%99s-oldest-service.htm http://fantasyescortguide.com/cop-talk/escort-industry/financial-crisis-tames-demand-for-world%e2%80%99s-oldest-service.htm#comments Thu, 11 Dec 2008 02:13:48 +0000 Support http://fantasyescortguide.com/cop-talk/?p=65

PRAGUE — On a recent night at Big Sister, which calls itself the world’s biggest Internet brothel, a middle-aged man selected a prostitute by pressing an electronic menu on a flat-screen TV to review the age, hair color, weight and languages spoken by the women on offer.

Once he had chosen an 18-year-old brunette, he put on a mandatory terry-cloth robe and proceeded to one of the brothel’s luridly lighted theme rooms: an Alpine suite decorated with foam rubber mountains covered with fake snow.

Nearby, in the brothel’s cramped control room, two young technicians worked dozens of hidden cameras that would film the man’s performance and stream it, live, onto Big Sister’s Web site.

Customers can have sex free of charge at Big Sister, in return for signing a release form allowing the brothel to film their sexual exploits.

But even with this financial incentive, Carl Borowitz, 26, Big Sister’s marketing manager, a Moravian computer engineer, lamented that the global financial crisis had diminished the number of sex tourists coming to Prague.

“Sex is a steady demand, because everyone needs it, and it used to be taboo, which made a service like ours all the more attractive,” said Mr. Borowitz, who looks more like Harry Potter than Larry Flynt. “But the problem today is that there is too much competition and our clients don’t have as much disposable income as before.”

In the Czech Republic, where prostitution operates in a legal gray zone, the sex industry is big business, generating more than $500 million in annual revenues, 60 percent of which is derived from foreign visitors, according to Mag Consulting, a Prague-based research firm that studies the industry.

Big Sister is not the only brothel suffering the effects of a battered global economy. While the world’s oldest profession may also be one of its most recession-proof businesses, brothel owners in Europe and the United States say the global financial crisis is hurting a once lucrative industry.

Egbert Krumeich, the manager of Artemis, Berlin’s largest brothel, said that in November, usually peak season for the sex trade, revenues were down by 20 percent. In Reno, Nev., the famed Mustang Ranch recently laid off 30 percent of its staff, citing a decline in high-spending clients.

Big Sister is not struggling as much as some of its more traditional rivals, since its revenues are largely derived from the 30 euros a month, or about $38, its 10,000 clients pay to gain access to its site.

But Mr. Borowitz said Big Sister hoped to offset a 15 percent drop in revenues over the past quarter by expanding into the United States. The brothel also produces cable TV shows that air on Sky Italia and Britain’s Television X, as well as DVDs like “World Cup Love Truck.”

Ester, an 18-year-old prostitute at Big Sister who declined to give her last name, said that big-spending clients had diminished, but that she was still earning nearly 2,000 euros a month — enough to pay the rent and buy Louis Vuitton bags. “The reason to do this is for the money,” she said, after gyrating half-naked on a pole. Being filmed, she added, made her feel more like an actress than a sex object.

Since the fall of Communism in 1989, the Czech Republic has become a major transit and destination country for women and girls trafficked from countries farther east like Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Moldova, according to the police.

For nearly 20 years, tens of thousands of sex tourists have streamed into Prague, the pristinely beautiful Czech capital, drawn by inexpensive erotic services, an atmosphere of anonymity for customers and a liberal population tolerant of adultery. According to Mag Consulting, 14 percent of Czech men admit to having sex with prostitutes, compared with a European Union average of 10 percent.

Dozens of cheap flights to Prague have also ensured a flow of bachelor parties from across Europe, with multiple daily flights from Britain alone.

Jaromir Beranek, an analyst with Mag Consulting, said the strength of the Czech crown against the euro, lower spending power and competition from lower-cost sex capitals like Riga, Latvia, and Krakow, Poland, were threatening one of the country’s most thriving sectors.

Many Czechs are more than happy to see Prague shrug off its reputation as one of the world’s top 20 sex destinations. But some in the hotel industry are so alarmed by the drop in tourists that they are lobbying the government to legalize the trade, in the hope that it will help lure more clients.

While some critics have warned that legalization would effectively transform the Czech state into the country’s biggest pimp, the Czech government is considering whether to emulate the Netherlands and Germany by regulating prostitution like any other industry. It is considering passing legislation by the end of the year that would require the Czech Republic’s estimated 10,000 prostitutes to register with the local authorities.

Dzamila Stehlikova, a minister from the Green Party, who is shepherding the bill through Parliament, argued that by forcing the business out into the open, it would make it harder for human traffickers to thrive, while helping to ensure mandatory health checkups for prostitutes. Other advocates argued that legalization would generate millions of euros in lost tax revenue from an industry that was largely underground.

Not everyone is enthusiastic; the prostitutes themselves say that being issued prostitution identification cards would further stigmatize them.

Hana Malinova, director of Bliss Without Risk, a prostitution outreach group, said she feared the current credit crunch was pushing more poor women into prostitution, since they could make more money selling their bodies — about 120 euros for a half-hour session at some upscale sex clubs in Prague — than flipping burgers at McDonald’s.

Even with the downturn, she added, prostitution was far more resilient than other industries, though the downturn was discouraging adultery.

“An Austrian farmer from a remote area who is not married will still cross the border to the Czech Republic looking for sex,” she said. “On the other hand, the recession is helping to keep husbands at home who might otherwise be cheating on their wives.”

In Czech towns near the German border in northern Bohemia, long blighted by a daily influx of sex tourists, many are happy that the business is suffering.

Only a few years ago the town of Dubi was so overrun by prostitution that a nearby orphanage was opened to provide refuge for dozens of unwanted babies of prostitutes and their German clients. Sex could be purchased for as little as 5 euros — the price of a few beers in Dresden — drawing a daily influx of more than 1,000 sex tourists.

Today, more than three dozen brothels have been winnowed down to four; several were converted into goulash restaurants or golf clubs.

Petr Pipal, Dubi’s conservative mayor whose zero-tolerance policy was a key reason for the change, said that installing surveillance cameras and police officers at the entrance of brothels had deterred sex tourists. Rising prices for sex services and the global financial crisis, he added, were also helping to tame demand.

“Two or three years ago, we would get 1,000 men coming here for sex on a Friday night, which is a lot for a town of 8,000 people,” he said. “The one good thing about the economic crisis is that it is helping to keep sex tourists away.”

In Prague, even brothels in the most touristy areas complain they are suffering from economic hardship. On a recent night near Wenceslas Square in Prague, dozens of young men loitered outside a row of neon-lighted sex clubs, beckoning passing tourists with offers of complementary alcohol and racy strip shows.

Inside Darling, a multilevel cabaret famous for cancan shows modeled on the Moulin Rouge in Paris, young women gyrated on a stage, surrounded by leopard skin couches, flashing disco balls and paintings of naked women.

Suzana Brezinova, the club’s marketing director, said some high-spending businessmen still visited Darling to shrug off economic doldrums.

“People have less money,” she said. “But hard times also mean that people want to be cheered up.”

Jan Krcmar contributed reporting from Prague, and Victor Homola from Berlin.

Katie David
Issue date: 12/5/08 Section: Commentary

The world’s oldest profession seems to be very “in” right now. Between the Eliot Spitzer scandal, an NBC special on “The Business of High-End Prostitution,” a Showtime series about a London “escort” entitled The Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Ashley Dupré’s (Spitzer’s infamous call girl) media tour, the American public is very interested in prostitution. However, the media is not showing images of what many consider the typical victim of the sex trade, such as an impoverished and malnourished woman selling her body for crack. Clearly, that image is too disturbing for the middle-class American living room. Instead, the media focuses on “high-end” prostitution, where women are paid thousands for their services, which range from sex to compliments (seriously). While the data for this industry is difficult to track, the media is most likely not focusing on these “escort services” because they pose a deep societal problem. Instead the media probably sees what many young women today observe when examining the dynamics of high-end prostitution: how closely it resembles the dating situation for young women today.

Ashley Dupré and I have something in common. Neither of us has a degree in sociology or is really qualified to make sweeping statements about cultural movements. But we do it anyway. In Ashley’s recent interview with People magazine, she explains how the dynamics of prostitution have permeated the mainstream.

“This wasn’t any different than going on a date with someone you barely knew and hooking up with them,” she reasoned. “The only difference is I can pay my rent.”

In short, the relationship between sex and money is apparent outside the industry of high-end prostitution. Many young women today often joke about becoming trophy wives. I must admit that once I realized that no profession I was interested in could make me rich, that lifestyle seemed appealing to me. Women who “marry up” or “marry rich” are only lightly chastised by public opinion when what they are doing, offering up their bodies and looks for wealth, is not so different from high-end prostitution.

More pervasive, however, is how young women are responding to offers of wealth in exchange for the “hook-ups” Ashley describes. In our parents’ generation, women could expect men to pay for them and it was considered chivalrous. Today for us young women, when a boy buys dinner for us, we often feel guilty if we don’t give him something in return. In this post-feminist era, women are having trouble finding their place in the relationship balance and money only complicates that dilemma. Women are no longer burning their bras, but instead finding men who will buy them expensive ones.

According to CNBC, the most popular item offered by escorts today is called the Girlfriend Experience (or GFE). While there isn’t a standard definition, most in the industry agree that it involves some facsimile of real romance, including dinners, vacations and gifts in addition to original payments. With the advent of online dating, reality shows like The Girls Next Door (documenting the lives of the ultimate high-end prostitutes, Hugh Hefner’s three girlfriends) and the sex trade evolving into the “relationship trade,” more and more people are approaching dating like a business transaction instead of a search for companionship. And the media’s glamorization of high-end prostitution is not helping. If our society, especially young women like myself, continue to think this way, perhaps all relationships will simply become glorified “girlfriend experiences.” Chivalry may not be dead, but it could come at a hefty price.

By Abigail Goldman

Sat, Nov 29, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Mahria is a “beautiful blonde” offering “erotic wrestling” for $100.

Dru is charging $80 for an hour of “sensual massage.”

Alicia can be at your door in half an hour.

These advertisements, which come with photos a family newspaper won’t print, are a small sample of what can be found in the “erotic services” section of Craigslist in Las Vegas — an online classified ads Web site that, aside from helping people find roommates or sell old lawn mowers, has become one of the most popular ways for Clark County escorts to peddle their wares to the electronic masses. It’s an Internet buffet of costly companionship, but perhaps not for long.

Just over two weeks ago, Craigslist began charging a fee to advertise on the site’s “erotic services” section. The fee is small — $5 — but the consequences are huge.

The fee must be paid with a credit card, and Craigslist will supply this credit card information to law enforcement officials, should they subpoena it. Erotic services advertisers must also provide a phone number, which an automated system will call before any posting is published online.

In short, Craigslist is working with the police.

Erotic services advertisements in the dozens of American cities Craigslist serves have fallen dramatically since Nov. 6, when the fee took effect, the company’s chief executive, Jim Buckmaster, told the Sun. On Monday in Las Vegas, that meant there were only 362 erotic services ads posted on Craigslist. The Monday before the traceable fees, there were more than 1,100 ads.

Craigslist entered into the agreement with 40 attorneys general, including Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, to clamp down on illegal services being offered online. And the shrinking number of erotic services ads are a clear victory for law enforcement, at least on the surface. Some critics, however, including local Vegas escorts, suggest the move will only force prostitutes onto the streets in search of clients they once could have courted from the comfort, and relative safety, of their laptops.

There are numerous Web sites that charge escorts considerable fees to advertise their services. Craigslist, because it was free, was a forum for escorts who didn’t have money to market themselves — escorts who are, in many ways, the most vulnerable, UNLV sociology professor and prostitution researcher Barbara Brents said.

When asked whether taking away the free online forum would endanger prostitutes by forcing them onto the streets and into casinos, a spokeswoman for Cortez Masto, Edie Cartwright, said via e-mail, “Prostitution has always been a fluid problem. It is the secrecy of anonymous ads on Craigslist that the agreement targets.”

Craigslist’s chief executive would not comment on whether the company has provided law enforcement officials with any identifying information about those who post erotic services ads.

But not everybody is scared off. Randi, a 28-year-old escort who has been working in Las Vegas for several years, said paying five dollars and risking arrest still pencils out in an escort’s favor.

“If you get arrested, it’s a few hundred dollars’ bail, a few hours in jail, and you’re out,” she said. “It’s worth it.”

She hasn’t been caught so far, she said.

For all the criticism of the clampdown, the flip side is easy to see as well: With fewer escorts advertising, prospective johns have less opportunity. And just as some prostitutes are loath to walk the streets, some johns are hesitant to hire company off the curb. Men who normally find escorts on Craigslist are increasingly scared to do so, according to one prostitute, who says her clients are equally put off by the idea police can subpoena details about their date.

The anonymity once offered by Craigslist made it easy for minors, or people selling their bodies to support a drug habit, to advertise themselves online, even though established escort companies wouldn’t employ them, Metro Vice Sgt. Gil Shannon said.

Nichole Yegge was a horrific example: The 17-year-old Vegas teen was advertising on Craigslist, allegedly pimped by the couple arrested this August in connection with her slaying.

If Yegge hadn’t been so easily sold on Craigslist, if she had had a harder time becoming an underage escort, perhaps she might not have been wound up mutilated in the Nevada desert.

Told of the drop in erotic services ads, Shannon said, “That’s fantastic.”

You could hear his smile through the phone.

Metro vice has worked with craigslist before, particularly when it was clear that underage escorts were posting nude photographs of themselves on the site — child porn, essentially. When detectives would subpoena information about the person posting these advertisements, however, the information available was often of little use because everything was so easily made anonymous online. Now connecting the dots between an escort advertising online and an arrest will be much easier for the department. The vice section has yet to subpoena the newly available credit card information, but, Shannon said, it’s “coming to a courtroom near you.”

Again, you could hear his smile.

Thirty million ads are posted on Craigslist’s global classified ad sites every month, for such things as apartment rentals and rescue dogs. Buckmaster said he wasn’t aware of any study that broke out the number of erotic services ads, but it seems safe to assume that at $5 a pop, the new fee structure will generate a considerable amount of revenue. That money will be donated to charities that address human trafficking and child exploitation, Buckmaster said. But the charities haven’t been chosen. That was one reason Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum would not join his 40 colleagues in supporting the changes at Craigslist — it’s unclear where that money will go, and how it will be distributed.

Cortez Masto’s spokeswoman, when asked whether this was of any concern for the Nevada AG, said “we understand that the choice of charities is up to the company; the purpose of the use of a credit card is to create an identification trail for the advertiser.”

Of course, escorts are already coming up with payment techniques that make that identification trail harder to trace, one escort said. She wasn’t willing to explain the techniques because they seem to be working so far.

That’s the nature of the beast, Shannon, the vice sergeant, said. Every step forward may be followed by one or two steps back, as escorts look for another way to ply their trade. Many will join up with agencies, he said. The men snapping handbills on the Strip aren’t running out of little cards to pass out any time soon.

And it’s only a matter of time until someone, shielded by free speech protections, comes up with another free Web site for escorts to advertise on.

By GLENN COUNTS / NewsChannel 36
E-mail Glenn: GCounts@WCNC.com

Sally Saxon Interview on video

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Who is Sallie Saxon? The simple answer is that she is a criminal. But nothing was simple in the life of this very complicated woman.

“Your whole life is a lie. Everything is a lie,” Saxon said in an exclusive interview with NewsChannel 36.

On Aug. 27, the life that this south Charlotte mom knew changed forever.

“I made a lot of money, but I’m going to be honest with you, it’s not worth the money to have lived like that,” Saxon said.

Saxon was sent to federal prison for two years for running “Hush Hush,” the largest Internet-based prostitution ring in America.

“If I provided the list then it’s got the names of high profile people throughout the United States,” Saxon said.

Saxon’s business was high-end — wealthy men, expensive dinners, flowers and gifts. But her start more than 20 years ago was nothing like that. There was precious little glamour and a lot of danger when she worked as a call girl.

Her first husband was sent to Vietnam. When he returned from the war, Saxon said he had psychological issues and physically abused her and her son.

She was desperate when a prominent Charlotte businessman and his group of friends made her an indecent proposal.

“The food was getting low. It really was and they knew that I was in that situation,” Saxon said.

With just $25 to her name and two kids to support, she felt she had no choice but to sell her body.

“I felt terrible about myself when I did that. I did. I was nervous. I was afraid. I was upset,” Saxon said.

After she left that abusive marriage, Saxon says she got out of the business for a while and got a job in sales.

“I was not making enough money,” she said. “By then your children are getting older, then they need more.”

Sallie says she made the decision to return to the life of a call girl, but instead of working independently she found employment with a couple of escort services.

“That was terrible, absolutely terrible,” she said.

Saxon says the services only cared about one thing — money.

Extended Audio:
•  How Saxon started ‘Hush Hush’
•  Saxon on living a double life
•  The client list: Powerful, rich men
•  Saxon’s relationship advice and why men cheat

Blog:
•  My jailhouse interview with Sallie Saxon

Related Stories:
•  Part 1: Who is Sallie Saxon?
•  Part 2: Saxon’s powerful client

“If you did not give the client what he wanted, everything he wanted, then you had to pay a fine. So I ended up owing the agency more than I made because I had fines everywhere,” she said.

There was one night at a Charlotte motel that changed Saxon’s life. She ended up having to fight for her life.

“The gentleman opened the door and I walked in and I looked to my right, and I could see silhouettes behind the shower curtain, and I got out without my shoes, my blouse was torn, my pocketbook, I don’t know where it went,” Saxon said.

At that point, some women might have gotten out of the business for good, but not Saxon. It was at that moment that she decided to become a madam.

The money, the flowers, expensive dinners, fancy clothes and cars — Sallie Saxon enjoyed all the trapping of a successful, albeit illegal, business.

“I liked the way I was treated because people thought I had money,” Saxon said. “I liked the power it represented and the respect that it gave.”

Last November that life came to an end when FBI agents raided Saxon’s house on Coatbridge Lane and took her away in handcuffs. She pleaded guilty to money laundering charges and was sent to the federal medical center in Lexington, Ky., a minimum security prison for women.

“I started off very small,” Saxon said. “I worked with one lady or two ladies.”

That was more than 15 years ago. Saxon was one of the first madam’s to see the potential of the Internet.

“I was able to hide behind the Internet,” she said. “I was able to screen the clients. I was able to research the business and find out what mistakes other people made.”

By screening the clients Saxon was able to better protect her girls and generate lots of money. Her business took off.

“I decided that I wanted to be the best at whatever I did. I wanted to be very selective about the ladies I worked with,” Saxon said. “I also wanted clients that I considered gentlemen. Because of what I had been through in my life I was able to discern of who was and who was not a gentleman.”

These gentlemen had two things in common — money and power. Saxon says a lot of them would be nationally recognized.

“Washington politicians?” we asked.

“I’m just going to say that you would know them. You would know them. I’m not going to say yes or no, but the people I have affiliated with are people in high positions that make laws. They’re people that you watch on TV.”

Saxon’s clients were looking for more than just beauty. For every girl who applied, she says she only hired one out of 10.

“I wanted someone with a college degree. Someone who could carry on a conversation,” Saxon said. “I expected them to workout, to be in physically good shape, mentally, emotionally.”

When a gentleman would call or e-mail, Saxon’s first priority was to learn all that she could about him using Internet skills that could rival any computer hacker.

“I could find out anything I wanted,” she said. “I found out the names of their children, the mother, their neighbors, their work, how long they worked there, how much they paid for their house.”

If you made the cut as a client — and she says half the men did not — it would cost you $2,500 for a three-hour date, including dinner at an expensive restaurant. Saxon would always spring for a complimentary dessert. If a client wanted some out-of-town company, say to St. Thomas, Saxon would make sure they had an enjoyable time.

“I was the booking agency. I was a psychiatrist. I was a friend. I was a mother, and I was a babysitter,” Saxon said.

In case you’re wondering, it was the men who needed most of the babysitting. Saxon says their egos were limitless.

“Themselves are the main thing they are concerned about. They lose compassion for other people. They couldn’t understand why their wives didn’t want anything to do with them,” she said.

These men were so rich and powerful that even after the bust, they kept calling.

“I’d say, ‘Do you realize my phones are tapped?’ And these are the kinds of people, it just goes over their head. These are the kind of men if you say no to, they say, ‘Wow, that’s a challenge.’”

These were also the kind of men who enjoyed living on the edge, who flirted with being caught, and sometimes they were. Saxon blamed the men when their wives found out.

“When I would tell the client, ‘And by the way, your wife is on the phone, and she has something to say to you,’ I never heard from them again,” Saxon said.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Who is Sallie Saxon? It’s a complicated question. Her story began March 30, 1950. She was raised by her grandparents in their Myers Park home.

“Took dancing lessons, went to etiquette school and I felt like I had a very good family. I come from a good family,” Saxon said.

Saxon was one of the first students to walk through the doors of Quail Hollow Elementary School. She graduated from South Mecklenburg High and attended Queens College for a year.

Growing up, she says, she didn’t date much.

“I can’t say that I was a person that was going out and going to a lot of parties because wherever I went I was chaperoned, either by my father or my granddaddy and the granddaddy was the worst,” Saxon said.

Saxon says a bad marriage and a desperate financial situation transformed her from an innocent little girl into the biggest Internet madam in the country.

NewsChannel 36 talked to her at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Ky. It is a minimum security prison. There are only about 287 inmates here.

“I’m fine with this, and the food is good and the staff is respectful,” Saxon said. “I’ve felt all along that they really want to help me.”

It is a higher power that is helping Saxon adjust to her new life as a convicted felon.

“I was walking through the valley, and none of us come to the Lord Jesus Christ on top of the mountaintop when we’re doing great. That’s when we think we don’t need him,” Saxon said. “But I was in the valley and my life needed to change and my life changed.”

Saxon says her spiritual transformation began four months before FBI agents knocked on her door.

“I just could not get over the fact that I had asked God to get me out of the business and I felt that he had, and I didn’t care how I got out, I just knew I was done,” she said.

Saxon made a lot of money — $3 million according to the FBI’s count — but she says she was never free to enjoy it and she lied to everyone.

At a family gathering her father asked her, “So what do you really do?” And she says she handed him a bunch of fake invoices and claimed she was paid for Internet design.

“I think when he told me that he believed me that hurt me more than anything, because he believed a lie I had just told him,” Saxon said.

Because of her spiritual journey, Saxon says she can clearly see all the hurt that she has caused.

“Do I think it should be made legal? Personally, where I stand now with my faith and what I’ve been through, violating holy matrimony is wrong. It’s totally wrong,” Saxon said.

Because of her cooperation, the government was able to prosecute three Johns. Saxon would like to see more.

“I still feel that the client needs to be held accountable. I really do. It’s time. Otherwise it makes a whole mockery of the whole thing,” she said.

To this point, no girls have been prosecuted. Saxon went to bat for them.

“I have a softer spot in that area. One side of me wants to say no, because I know why many of them got into it,” she said.

Saxon acknowledges that she exploited them, but she hopes they benefited.

“I’m proud that I was able to make them the money that they could put themselves through school and educate their children, buy a home, get out of debt. I’m proud that I provided a safe situation for them,” she said.

What about the list? The 2,200 clients that were at Saxon’s fingertips — the rich, the powerful and the famous, will we ever know who they are?

“My husband and I prayed for a long time about what to do with the list, and I’m not out here to expose those people,” Saxon said. “That’s something they will have to live with. I’m here to serve my time and to pay mankind back for what I’ve done.”

In two years, Saxon will walk out of the doors of FMC Lexington. She says that she prepares for that day every day while she is in prison and she has faith that she will make it.

Charlotte businessman James Smith was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months probation for hiring prostitutes and writing them off as advertising expenses on his corporate income taxes.

Smith, owner of construction company Red Clay Aggregate, had pleaded guilty in August to tax fraud. He’d faced up to three years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Nine of the 18 months probation are to be spent in home confinement. He declined comment Wednesday through his attorney.

Smith was the second john to plead guilty in the federal government’s investigation into “HushHush,” a lucrative prostitution ring in Charlotte.

Smith was accused of using the services of Soft Touch Promotions and SW Associates from 2002 through October 2007. Those were the shell companies used to operate the Internet-based escort service, according to court documents.

The madam of the high-priced call-girl service, Sallie Saxon, was sentenced to two years in prison. Prosecutors have said her service drew some 1,900 clients and employed hundreds of hookers over several years. Liaisons took place at hotels around SouthPark and uptown, as well as in Chicago and Las Vegas.

Prosecutors allege Smith reported income of about $455,935 on his 2006 tax return. But Smith, according to the federal charge, knew his income was substantially more. Prosecutors say Smith owed an additional $19,543.66 in taxes over a five-year period.

“In truth and fact, the expenses were personal in nature, and the false treatment on the tax return caused the understatement of income to defendant James Smith,” the charge alleges.

Craigslist sex ads reined in

By SCOTT GUTIERREZ
P-I REPORTER

Intending to help police shut down illegal sex-for-hire ads, Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna and his counterparts in 39 states announced an agreement Thursday with Craigslist.com in which the company adopted new policies.

Under the agreement, the free classified ad site will require users who post ads under “erotic services” to provide a working phone number and pay a fee using a valid credit card. The information will be provided to police if the company is served with a subpoena.

	McKenna

The site is used by more than 40 million people each month to shop, sell or rent apartments, services and other goods, according to the company. But police say it’s increasingly used as a medium for pimps and prostitutes to reach clients, and in some cases, to sell the services of women or girls who were forced into prostitution.

“I think these steps will effectively deter a good deal of the illegal activity in the personal services section of Craigslist,” McKenna said. “First of all, a lot of these individuals don’t want their real identities revealed. Plus, it provides a trail for law enforcement to follow if they decide to offer illegal services, anyway.”

Earlier this year, police and federal agents in Lynnwood arrested 15 people, including women and girls, who advertised escort services on Craigslist. One of two teenage girls arrested was an illegal immigrant, and police were investigating whether human trafficking played a role.

Two years ago, in one of the largest Craigslist busts in the region, Seattle detectives posted their own ads on the Web site and arrested about 100 male customers who responded to a downtown hotel room rented for the operation. In addition, detectives posed as customers, answered real ads on the site and arrested 14 prostitutes, including girls under 16.

“We’re pleased that Craigslist is taking proactive steps to police its own site. Time will tell whether or not its measures will have a net reduction in Internet-brokered sex crimes,” Seattle Police Sgt. Sean Whitcomb said.

McKenna likened the Craigs- list agreement to similar approaches taken with social networking sites such as MySpace.com and Facebook.com to guard against child predators luring children online. He said it could be used as a template for other online service providers.

“It’s appealing to their better nature and common sense in terms of protecting a brand. We didn’t threaten a lawsuit. They were very cooperative and collaborative,” he said of the Craigslist agreement.

Escort ads also appear in publications such as The Stranger and Seattle Weekly, but they’re paid for through transactions that are documented, and police can obtain warrants to review them, McKenna said.

As part of the agreement with the attorneys general, Craigslist will employ new technology to aid police and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in finding missing children and potential victims of human trafficking.

The company also has agreed to sue 14 software and Internet companies whose products are used to help circumvent the site’s terms of use, Chief Executive Officer Jim Buckmaster said Thursday.

The company also is refining its protocols for blocking inappropriate content. The site provides a system for people to flag ads containing illegal content.

Craigslist has always warned users that ads involving illegal activity violate its terms of service. The company enables users to flag inappropriate or illegal ads for removal, although it has been criticized in the past for not taking more aggressive action.

“The incidence of crime on Craigslist is actually exceedingly low, considering the tens of millions of legitimate ads posted each month by well-intentioned users,” Buckmaster said in a statement.

“But no amount of criminal activity is acceptable, and as Craigslist has grown, we have become aware of instances where our free services were being misused to facilitate illegal activities.”

The amount of the new user fee was not specified. All proceeds from the fee will be donated to charity, McKenna said.

Other states that signed the agreement were Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam also joined

HIGH COST, HIGH PRICE: McLennan

by CHRIS BARRY

Montreal has certainly had its share of quality celebrity exports over the years: Leonard Cohen, Captain Kirk, Patsy Gallant, to name a few. Yet what’s a hack like Leonard Cohen ever done to merit his glowing international rep? Exactly.

But Natalie “Natalia” McLennan, hey, now there’s another story. Born and raised in Montreal West, the Royal West Academy graduate and former tap dancing protégé left town a few years back looking for fame and fortune in the Big Apple, and actually found it. Yes, our hometown gal scaled the heights to become the top prostitute in a town chock-full of whores, earning herself a cool $2,000-an-hour warming the willies of Wall Street big shots, celebrity athletes, politicians and other studs with way too much money to burn.

Along the way, she got entangled in one of the most delicious scandals New York has seen in a long time, when it was discovered that Governor Eliot Spitzer had been a regular client of New York Confidential, allegedly forking over some 80 grand to the escort agency run by Natalie’s mega-unsavoury ex-boyfriend, Jason “King of All Pimps” Itzler.

Despite having left the agency just before the bust and the attendant media circus accompanying it, our heroine, who’d picked up a minor drug habit on her path to greatness, found herself looking at some potentially serious prison time.

Now safe and sound in Montreal living the straight, simple life working at a downtown spa, Natalie’s recounting of her ordeal, The Price: My Rise and Fall as Natalia, is available from fine booksellers everywhere.

Mirror: When did you get back into town?

Natalie McLennan: About a year ago. I’m living in the Plateau now, rediscovering the city—it’s great. I pretty much came back to reconnect with my family and because I couldn’t get shit done in New York. So many distractions there, parties to go to, restaurants to eat at, friends to hang out with. So I knew Montreal would be a good place to just come and do what needed to be done, which was finish my book.

M: You’ve notably declined to name any of your famous clients. Was that a difficult decision to make or simply obvious?

NM: It was obvious. Revealing names wasn’t even an option. When I was first working out my publishing deal, there were quite a few publishers who only wanted me to write a tell-all in the extreme sense and rip everybody’s private lives wide open. But I wouldn’t budge on that—not ever.

M: So, as a prostitute, you were getting 2K an hour with a two-hour minimum and–

NM: Crazy, right?

M: I’ll say. So how does it feel to just be giving it away now? Is it a sort of, “Hey, I used to get 4K for this, and now, like, at best all I’ll get is an orgasm” kind of thing?

NM: (laughing) Ah, but Chris, don’t we all really just give it away?

M: Huh? Um, I dunno. I guess it’s really two different things anyway, right? Fucking for money and fucking for pleasure.

NM: Yes, it’s two totally different things.

Too much money

M: When you’re earning that kind of insane money selling the simple pleasures of your company, do you tend to strut around thinking, “Goddamn, I’m as hot a chick as has ever walked the earth, look at me, I’m absolutely spectacular?”

NM: You know, it was so surreal. I was in this weird little fantasyland, walking around with way too much money. There was definitely a lot of pressure too though. But I clued in right away what my niche was: a really awesome fun girl to hang out with. And I was pretty and I’m a sexual person, so the whole package really put it together. I made sure I was always in a good mood when I was with clients. I was also very fortunate to never lose a sense of who I was within the business, you know? Like, it’s true I got caught up and swept away a little, but even in those moments, I made of point of checking in with myself to make sure I was always true to myself.

M: Do you have any advice for other girls looking to earn themselves a cool 2K an hour as prostitutes?

NM: Um… Ah, I dunno.

M: Seriously, what would you suggest? Like, “Always brush your teeth, comb your hair, make sure you’re clean down there.” What sort of–

NM: Oh my God. I really don’t know. I guess I’d tell them to be careful. It’s true I got lucky but that’s not the case for everyone. My worst nightmare is some girl reading my book and saying “Oh my gosh, wow, that’s something I could totally do and feel comfortable with” and then not going into the right part of the industry and getting hurt. But if they’d already made up their minds, I’d tell them to make sure they’re doing it for the right reasons, to get a good therapist, and make sure they’ve got some good friends and family around. That’s it.

M: If you had a hot-looking daughter, might you recommend a career in whoring to her?

NM: I would never recommend or try and steer someone else into it. I know it was okay for me at the time when I did it. But everybody is different. Everybody deals with situations differently. Some people are better at handling different things.

Shits and giggles

M: When you’re charging 2K an hour for sexual services, is pretty well everything a go? Like, at that price, if a client is into scatting, do you just smile demurely while he takes a good old-fashioned beer shit on you? Going, “Ah, this is wonderful, baby, let’s roll around in it afterwards while we make sweet love?”

NM: I have to tell you that… It wasn’t… Oh God. Um, okay. With anything goes… Lemme think. (long pause) No, I definitely had my boundaries and I definitely maintained them. I knew what I was comfortable with and knew what felt good to me. And really, that’s the thing. I think the number of clients who’d want to engage in something that someone else doesn’t enjoy is really a small percentage and probably not the kind of client you want anyway.

M: I guess so. But I think if I was spending 4,000 bucks to see the high-diving act, I would make sure that I saw the high-diving act, you know what I mean? Like, I wouldn’t care if the diving horse I was paying all that money to didn’t enjoy diving. Too bad. Then again, I guess if you’ve got that big a budget for whores to begin with, you’re not really thinking about dollar value in the same way someone of more modest means might. Did you have a preferred sex act with clients?

NM: Wow, what an awesome question, no one has ever asked me that before.

M: Are you kidding me?

NM: People tend to tiptoe around certain things, or they just don’t go there. Um, my preferred sex act. Well, I think that’s a little private. Which I know sounds crazy since I just wrote a book about it.

M: Well yeah, I’m not exactly asking what you think about when you’re masturbating or anything especially personal, you know? Just what, as a professional, was your preferred sex act. Like, was it the quickest, easiest thing or….

NM: Um, okay. Let me transport myself back to the world of escorting for a minute. (Pause) Okay, I really don’t know.

M: Alright, so be it. So how often would you genuinely wind up having a bang-up enjoyable time with a client?

NM: Most of the time. I made sure I did, I made sure it was fun. Just imagine having a job where it’s fun, easy and you’re making insane money. Those are all the positives.

Women in prison

M: So why did you leave New York Confidential then?

NM: My relationship with Jason was deteriorating, I didn’t feel safe there anymore, I didn’t feel happy there anymore, there were some new managers that came in who were really mean, negative people. It changed the whole vibe of the agency. Like, we had this whole sex utopia going on there and it just vanished, you know? So at that point, I just figured, well, why am I here? So I decided to leave.

M: And then, a month later, they got busted. You ended up doing time at Rikers? How did that come about?

NM: I’m sorry, I really can’t discuss the details of my case, but yeah, I did, only because they set my bail so high, $250,000. That’s why I went to jail for 26 days, three days longer than Paris Hilton. Jail is a terrible place. When I was growing up watching Law and Order, I would always cringe whenever the jail doors would slam, and then, ah, like, fast-forward 15 years. It was really brutal. One thing I know for sure is that I’ll never be in that situation again. It’s a nightmarish experience.

M: Were you especially popular with some of the more, how do you say, masculine girls at Rikers?

NM: Honestly, I don’t want to burst anybody’s balloon, but when you’re at Rikers, it’s really just a survival thing. Nobody is at that stage of it yet. When you go upstate and you actually get sentenced to do time, that reality exists. But for me, it was more about not getting hurt. The girls in there were really aggressive. Really aggressive.

M: And to you especially, I’d assume, the famous 2k-an-hour call girl. After all, they get the New York Post in Rikers.

NM: Yes, exactly, they do! And they published this full-page picture of me that everyone was walking around with. Everyone in there was really resentful because I had a good lawyer and regular court dates to try and resolve my situation. A lot of girls there don’t have those opportunities to get themselves to a better place.

M: And they all think you’re loaded too, right? Which is both good and bad in jail.

NM: Yes, exactly.

Looking for local fun

NO PLACE LIKE HOME: McLennan, a Montrealer again

M: Were you able to walk away from the business with any money?

NM: No, there was a lot of money owed to me that I never got. Money that was sitting in an account which I believe got seized. It’s probably all for the best—it might have gotten me into a lot more trouble and I probably still wouldn’t have it. So hey, I came back to my humble beginnings in Montreal and now I’m trying something new.

M: Do you resent that Ashley Dupree, who you turned on to big money whoring, has somewhat successfully cashed in on all the notoriety from the Spitzer scandal?

NM: Well, has she really? She sold 500,000 copies of her single on iTunes, so that’s good, but she’s kind of disappeared now, hasn’t she? I know she’s still popping in and out of hotels, she’s in the press for that, but I’ll be very curious to see how the music career she’s working on will be received, how far she’ll be able to go. Actually, she’s a cool, down-to-earth, awesome girl. I only wish her the best. She just got caught up in a huge situation, this crazy scandal.

M: What do you think you’ll do for a career now?

NM: Well, the book is out and I love writing. I studied acting and still really love that whole world. So I dunno, I think I’m due for a light bulb moment soon. I can sense it coming. I’m enjoying living in Montreal again a lot. Except for winter, which sucks. I really need to find a winter activity to keep myself sane this year. So if anybody out there wants to teach me how to snowboard, tell them to get in touch with me. I’m totally open to learning, because I really need something fun to do now.