The Associated Press is saying that members of the New York Knicks basketball team may have been the professional athletes who received sexual favors by way of a strip club now under federal racketeering indictment.
The AP says the federal indictment against the Gold Club and its owner Steven Kaplan indicated that in spring 1997, Kaplan and other defendants brought Gold Club dancers to the Francis Marion Hotel in Charleston, South Carolina, so the dancers could perform in a lesbian sex show and have sex with members of an NBA team.
The team isn't mentioned explicitly, but the Knicks were holding a pre-playoff training camp at a nearby college at that time. And the AP cites the New York Daily News as saying unidentified sources revealed the club in question was the Knicks.
Kaplan is free on $2 million bond and 11 other defendants on $50,000 bonds after pleading innocent Wednesday in Atlanta. Four remaining defendants face arraignment today.
Hotel manager Kevin Eichman tells the Charleston Post that the Knicks had never been booked at the hotel, and a Knicks spokeswoman says she was unaware of the indictment involving the Gold Club.
The government charges the Gold Club was all but a brothel that corrupted police, provided dancers as prostitutes for regular clients and skimmed millions from the cash flow to buy protection from the New York-based Gambino organized crime family.
