A federal investigation into a multimillion-dollar Internet prostitution ring has expanded to include whether the ring laundered proceeds through a popular Brooklyn restaurant.
It took last week's arrest of NYElites for federal investigators to find what the New York Daily News called "a web of Internet escort services that claimed to offer Penthouse models and high-profile porn stars – as well as 'college cuties’ and girls-next-door – as dates for big-money johns."
But now the feds want to know if Barracuda Seafood Restaurant, a popular Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, eatery, has been a Laundromat for the ring's profits. Reputed ring mastermind Elena Trochtchenkova was said to be listed as the chief executive officer of ERA International Group, the owners of the Barracuda. Her boyfriend and reputed ring co-leader, Rady Abdel-Salem Abassy, under his alias Rudy Alexander, was listed as a Barracuda co-owner, the News said, adding that the restaurant underwent expensive renovations in recent times.
That, the paper said, tipped federal agents off as to the question of whether the NYElites operations' profits went through the restaurant, while they also came to believe Trochtchenkova and Abbassy may have used 15 other shell companies to launder the cyberprostitution proceeds.
Agents raiding NYElites' 32nd Street headquarters in Manhattan found among other things a ledger containing a list of clients and how much they paid in credit-card slips or cash and emails detailing travel arrangements. Investigators were also able to determine that the ring involved 200 prostitutes with 30 or 40 active "on any given day," as New York-based chief of immigration and customs enforcement Martin Ficke told the Daily News.
Several other escort services, with names like Exotica 2000, Ce Soir, Night Flight, and Camelot, shared NYElites's Manhattan addresses and telephone numbers, the paper said.
The operation is believed to have brought in $5.5 million in credit-card payments alone from 2001 to 2004, Ficke told the Daily News, adding that the total income of the ring would likely be far higher considering the operators encouraged cash payments for discretion's sake.
Federal agents charged Trochtchenkova and Abbassy as the masterminds of the operation; each face 30 years behind bars and $11 million fines, the Daily News added. Abbassy was in jail without bail because he was in the country illegally following his 1985 deportation on a drug conviction, according to the News story.
Two women, Valerie Hairston and Nancy Kahja, were arrested as suspected escort dispatchers who maintained card files with escorts' pictures, physical descriptions, and descriptions of their sexual specialties, the News said, citing court documents.
Trochtchenkova ($1 million bail), Hairston ($100,000 bond), and Kahja ($100,000 bond) were released after their bookings. Trochtchenkova's attorney, Isabelle Krischner, told the paper the business was a legal escort service and anyone doing "other things" did it "on their own and by their own choice."
NYElites is reputed to have recruited their escorts from the adult-entertainment world and through applications filed on its website, which has been shut down since last week. The News said applicants were required to submit photographs, though not nudes, and the website showed calendars indicating which women would be available when in various cities, and that all escorts traveled.
The paper also said they booked travel and accommodations through Hotwire, which is said to be cooperating with investigators in the case.
