New York City police busted a $7 million upscale prostitution ring in Brooklyn Wednesday, CNN's Chris Boyette reports. Seventeen people were charged in connection with an escort service, called High Class NY, that raked in huge sums over three years as customers paid as much as $10,000 a night to sleep with the classiest hookers.
Boyette reports the "144-count indictment includes allegations of enterprise corruption, promoting prostitution, money laundering, and criminal sale of a controlled substance" against the escort service's owners, eleven managers, and biggest financial backers. Attorneys vowed to fight the charges.
The cheapest hookers High Class NY offered cost $400 an hour; a premium hooker--called "models" so their real jobs could be concealed, police say--could cost as much as 12 times that amount. The business uses fake names on its billing statements to hide the real source of the charges, investigators say, and ran several classy websites, including AngelofYourChoice.com and HighClassNY.com (screengrab pictured above).
Patrons "were all high-end customers," Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said, according to The New York Daily News' Oren Yanic. "People with nothing but money who are willing to pay these enormous amounts for god knows what." God knows what, indeed. Probably sex, but that's just a guess.
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Elspeth Reeve
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