Grand jury testimony in the Gold Club racketeering case includes high rollers dropping $20K a night on booze and naked women, with beautiful women retiring to semiprivate rooms with well-heeled men - punctuated by overpriced champagne, overdone credit cards, and lust for sex and power. Management hostility often greeted exotic dancers when they complained about prostitution and sex running rampant at the Atlanta hot spot; one dancer even called it, outright, "a whorehouse."
Gold Club owner Steven Kaplan and 16 co-defendants were hit last November in a wide-ranging indictment including prostitution at the club. Sex clientele is said to have including basketball star Patrick Ewing and others of his New York Knicks teammates, a few members of the New York Mets baseball team, and other celebrity athletes. Kaplan and his co-defendants are also accused of using the Gold Club as part of a money laundering and police corruption operation paying protection money to the Carlo Gambino crime.
Federal prosecutors provided the grand jury testimony to Atlanta when the city moved to revoke the Gold Club's liquor license. The testimony, obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, focuses primarily on the prostitution charges. Former Gold Club manager Jeffrey Johnson has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with authorities in the case. Kaplan's attorneys say any prostitution in the club occurred without his knowledge. It isn't known yet whether any of the celebrity athletes - whose names were stricken from grand jury testimony - will be called to testify in a full trial.
