By LEVI PULKKINEN and SCOTT GUTIERREZ
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
One year after police raided his businesses, Northwest strip club mogul Frank Colacurcio Sr. and his son, Frank Colacurcio Jr., and four others have been indicted by a grand jury on allegations that they promoted prostitution inside their clubs.
In an indictment returned a week ago and unsealed Tuesday, federal authorities accuse the Colacurcios and their associates of racketeering, using interstate commerce to facilitate prostitution, money laundering and mail fraud. At issue are allegations that the strip clubs — Rick’s in Seattle, Sugar’s in Shoreline, Honey’s in Everett and Fox’s in Tacoma — were used as fronts for prostitution and allegedly garnered the men $25 million in the past four years.
The indictment follows a years-long investigation that culminated last June in raids by Seattle police and federal agents on Colacurcio-owned clubs in King and Pierce counties, including Talents West, a Colacurcio-owned agency that hires strippers for the clubs. Also hit was Rick’s club in Lake City, which remained a frequent target of law enforcement vice investigations.
Speaking Tuesday, Seattle U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sullivan said federal prosecutors have interviewed more than 200 witnesses, and reviewed hours of recorded phone calls, surveillance video and intercepts from listening devices placed in several Colacurcio businesses.
“These men made millions of dollars exploiting young women,” Sullivan said. “These girls were not paid to dance, they paid to dance.”
Key to the prosecutors’ case, according to court documents, is the payment scheme in which strippers paid $75 to $130 in daily “rent” to the Colacurcio businesses. Such an arrangement is common in Washington strip clubs, which are not allowed to sell liquor to generate profit.
Sullivan contended that managers at the Colacurcio-associated clubs were more intent on payment from the dancers, and created a situation in which some were forced to prostitute themselves to pay the fee. When the illegal activity became apparently, Sullivan contended, little was done to discipline dancers.
In court documents, the Colacurcios are also accused of bilking the City of Seattle out of tax revenue by under-counting the number of patrons accessing the club. Each defendant faces nine counts of mail fraud on the allegation that they knowingly mailed false tax documents to the city.
Taking questions from media Tuesday, Sullivan said the investigation was not directly related to the Strippergate corruption scandal, in which the Colacurcios were accused of making illegal campaign contributions to Seattle City Council members in order to secure a change in zoning laws. Father and son Colacurcio ultimately pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges in the case, which ended the political careers of two City Council candidates in 2003.
Attorneys for the Colacurcios did not return calls for comment Tuesday afternoon. Also indicted in U.S. District Court in Seattle were Frank Colacurcio Sr.’s nephew Leroy Richard Christiansen, longtime associates John Gilbert Conte and David Carl Ebert, and And Fox’s manager Steven Michael Fueston. Several associated businesses are also named in the criminal indictment, which could allow federal authorities to seize them and their assets.
The investigation — which involved the use of undercover officers, confidential informants and unspecified surveillance techniques — followed earlier Seattle Police Department vice squad busts at Rick’s. Sullivan said Tuesday that the witnesses include a number of former employees who agreed to testify after receiving immunity agreements; officers also “bugged” Colacurcio offices to record conversations between the men.
Providing excerpts from those recordings, prosecutors assert that Colacurcio and his associates had been told that the strippers were trading sex for money and did little to prevent the exchange. Prosecutors assert that, on hearing complaints from two dancers that a colleague was offering sex to Rick’s patrons, Frank Colacurcio Jr. said the offending stripper sounded like his “type of girl.”
In another instance, prosecutors assert that a dancer admitted to using her breasts as “props” during a sex act. In response, Ebert allegedly offered to pay for a “demonstration.”
“I want a demonstration,” Ebert allegedly said, according to court documents. “I’ll even pay for a demonstration. I want to see the props.”
Prosecutors make a more personal allegation against Frank Colacurcio Sr., alleging that he “regularly engaged in sex acts with the dancers from the strip clubs, and allowed dancers who engaged in prostitution at the strip clubs to continue working at the clubs, sometimes in exchange for committing sex acts with him.”
The accused face up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted on the 15 counts against each of them. They are scheduled to be arraigned July 24 and remain free pending trial.
Seattlepi.com reporter Casey McNerthney contributed to this report. Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com.
Original at Seattle PI
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