Manhattan Attorney, Wife Pinched For Sex Club
Posted on Thursday, 4 of September , 2008 at 3:49 pm
MANHATTAN—A Manhattan attorney has been indicted for allegedly promoting prostitution and laundering over $700,000 in proceeds over a six month period.
The indictment also charges attorney Louis Posner, 52, and his wife, Betty, 57, both of 160 East 48 Street, with multiple counts of falsifying business records to aid in this criminal scheme.
Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau said the year-long investigation leading to Thursday’s indictment revealed that from mid-June 2007 to July 17, Posner, a tax attorney in private practice, together with his wife, owned and ran an unlicensed club, called the Hot Lap Dance Club, located in an illegally sublet loft on the fifth floor of 344 West 38th Street.
The club featured 40 to 70 female lap dancers, who charged $20 per dance, as well as live adult entertainment shows. Morgenthau said the investigation revealed that from Jan. 25 to July 17, many of the lap dancers were engaged in prostitution in the club’s private rooms. The club charged the customers for use of the rooms and split the fees with the dancers. Undercover police officers were allegedly offered sex for money by eight different dancers, with the prices ranging from $200 to $5,000.
Morgenthau said investigators found that Posner was present at the club and oversaw its operations on a nightly basis, and that he was not only aware of the prostitution activity, but encouraged it and profited from it. Posner also allegedly had sex with some of the dancers in the private rooms, paying them for their services by waiving the $100 nightly fee he charged to all dancers who worked at the club.
According to investigators, Betty Posner visited the club infrequently and apparently was not aware of the prostitution activity. Nevertheless, Morgenthau said she assisted her husband in managing the club’s finances and engaged in falsifying business records to do so.
From January to June, the Hot Lap Dance Club made over $726,000, often grossing over $20,000 a night, mostly in cash, investigators said. Prosecutors said to hide these large cash amounts and disguise their source, Posner allegedly made multiple smaller cash deposits on a daily basis into 13 personal and corporate bank accounts that he and his wife controlled.
About 30 percent of the club’s proceeds came from credit card charges, the payments for which were directly deposited by the credit card companies into various corporate bank accounts, prosecutors said. In applying for the contracts to process credit cards and open bank accounts, Morgenthau said the Posners, individually and together, repeatedly made false statements to disguise the nature of their business.
Morgenthau said they falsely claimed, for instance, that their business was a corporation called Web Access, Inc., which in fact had been dissolved by the state in 2001 for failure to pay taxes. Similarly, they falsely claimed that their business was a “for profit” entity called Voter March, Ltd., which in fact was a “not for profit” entity formed in 2000 to protest the presidential election results that year and which had been inactive since 2004. In 2008, they incorporated a business called HLD Entertainment Corp. to serve as a front for the Hot Lap Dance Club, then falsely claimed in applications for credit card contracts and bank accounts that the corporation had been in business for “one year” and was involved in “catering” and “miscellaneous food stores.”
Pursuant to a court-authorized search warrant, New York City Police Department officers raided the Hot Lap Dance Club on July 17 and arrested Posner, workers and dancers known to have engaged in prostitution at the club. Police seized $2,250 in cash from the club and another $6,200 in cash from Posner. Betty Posner was arrested that evening at the Posner home. Pursuant to additional court-ordered search warrants, police seized the $220,000 cash in the Posner’s two bank safety deposit boxes and the $31,140 in their two private safes, as well an additional $229,170.84 from 13 personal and corporate bank accounts at four different banks. The total amount seized was $550,764.84.
Louis Posner has been indicted on six counts of second degree money laundering, one count of third degree promoting prostitution, two counts of falsifying business records in the first degree and five counts of second degree falsifying business records.
His wife has been indicted on six counts of second degree falsifying business records.
The Posners were arraigned Thursday in State Supreme Court where they entered not guilty pleas, and were released on their own recognizance. Their next court date is Oct. 23. 9-4-08
Selected reports and commentaries are now available only to subscribers of NCG Daily Digest. To sign up, click on the subscription ad at www.northcountrygazette.org If you wish to pay by check or money order rather than PayPal, please contact us at news@northcountrygazette.org for a mailing address
Category: Business, Courts, Crime
- Add this post to
- Del.icio.us -
- Meneame -
- Digg
COPYRIGHT 2007 - NORTH COUNTRY GAZETTE All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of the publisher.
