The Track: How pimps ruin lives on Bourbon Street

When clubs like Rick’s Cabaret and the Penthouse Club came to the French Quarter, they sought to introduce high-end adult entertainment on Bourbon Street. The clubs’ bars were stocked with pricy champagne, their public areas decorated with cushy, comfortable furniture and filled with beautiful entertainers. Club representatives said that management made it clear to dancers that engaging in prostitution in private rooms would not be tolerated.

Rick’s Cabaret and Penthouse were not among the clubs cited by ATC in 2015’s Trick of Treat operation. During the course of investigating this series, ATC records showed no evidence the two clubs had sexual activity that attracted the attention of law enforcement.

Private rooms in some clubs on Bourbon Street continue to present a challenge for law enforcement, however, because of their concealed nature. Covenant House, which receives the majority of sex trafficking victim referrals in New Orleans under a U.S. Department of Justice grant, has assisted 132 victims since January 2016, according to its records.

Of all those victims since the start of 2016, 17 have reported having sex in private rooms or a bathroom in a French Quarter strip club. Nearly half those victims told Covenant House they were under the control of a pimp who forced them to have sex in the private rooms and turn over the money they earned there to the pimp.

Law enforcement records and interviews with officials, current and former club workers and advocates for sex trafficking victims indicate that at some clubs clientele can get “the extras” – the sexual touching that is illegal under state law but can be found in the French Quarter with the right dancer for the right price.

There are Internet sites where customers exchange comments about the perceived availability of “the extras.” In one case, a customer posted on a strip club review website about a dance in a Bourbon Street club that he said included “touching,” and the customer said the dancer “definitely adjusted me in my pants.” The club posted on its Facebook page a video of a dancer responding to the review.

“It seems like for the most part you did enjoy your time here with us,” the dancer says in the video.

Most strip clubs in the French Quarter feature private rooms, a major source of revenue. During a recent visit to a different club, Larry Flynt’s Hustler Barely Legal, a sign in the main dance floor read, “Ask about Barely Legal bedrooms.”

Upon request, a reporter visiting the club during an unannounced visit was led on a tour of the private rooms, most of which were decorated as bedrooms, with two rooms featuring beds and one other a sofa. One room had a faux fireplace. The lowest price quoted for an hour in the private room: $3,600. The dancer pointed out that there were no cameras installed in the rooms and promised the “full experience.” She did not specify what that meant.

Ann Kesler, a manager for the clubs that include Larry Flynt Hustler Club, Larry Flynt’s Hustler Barely Legal and the now-shuttered Déjà Vu, said in a statement that the clubs’ “business plan is based upon providing quality entertainment within the bounds of the law.

“Because New Orleans and Bourbon Street in particular is an entertainment destination, there have always been enough customers who are satisfied with a quality, well-run venue that operates in a lawful manner,” Kesler said. “We have a long track record in New Orleans that supports this claim. We provide regular management training that emphasizes safety, compliance with city and state laws and entertainment, in that order of importance.”

Kesler added that it is “our policy to terminate any manager, employee or contract entertainer who fails to follow those policies.”

According to a purported price list for Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club provided to NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune by a former employee at the club, customers pay VIP room fees ranging from $50 to $1,200. The club also makes money selling champagne at huge markups, ranging from $220 for the cheapest bottle to $4,400 for a two-hour VIP room experience with two bottles. Kesler did not respond to a request for more information on the Hustler VIP room price schedule.

In online forums where clientele trade reviews of the strip clubs, customers looking for anything ranging from manual stimulation to oral sex to intercourse will trade tips about which room in which New Orleans strip club is the most private, and which places you’re most likely to find prostitutes and at what prices.

A bouncer who has worked at several French Quarter strip clubs since 2011 saw the business model up close. The bouncer asked his name not be used, citing concerns about his safety, but a NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune reporter verified his identity and work history.

The bouncer said soon after he began working at Bourbon Street clubs as a host for private rooms, he found out that what goes on in the private room at one club he worked in was up to the dancer – and was dictated by how much money customers are willing to spend.

The bouncer said he first realized the private rooms at one club were being used for dancers to have sex with customers when he booked a room for a couple who paid more than $1,000 for an hour-long encounter. Private room hosts are assigned to check on private rooms for security purposes and to see if customers want more drinks, the bouncer said.

After about 20 minutes, he opened the door of the private room and saw the man having sex with the dancer. The bouncer said he told the couple to stop what they were doing and get dressed, and left to get a manager. When the manager checked the customer’s receipt and saw they had spent more than $1,000, he “just shrugged, talked to the customer and said to let them continue,” the bouncer said.

“We tell the customer that if there’s any problems, that we have the right to stop the room and refund the money. But that usually doesn’t happen unless a customer is trying to get physical or violent with an entertainer,” he said. “I learned that day, real quick, talking to other employees who worked there longer. They said, ‘Just keep it to yourself. As long as they’re not beating on the entertainer, don’t bother them.’”

From that point on, he said, it was commonplace to check VIP rooms at that club and see dancers performing oral sex on customers. But he didn’t raise the issue with management again, he said, because it was made clear that the club tolerated dancers making such arrangements with customers.

He said at several other clubs he worked for he was either not assigned to the private rooms, or the clubs may not have had private rooms, and he did not observe any apparently illegal activity concerning private rooms at those other clubs.

But he said at some of those other Bourbon Street clubs where he has worked, dancers and VIP hosts were “coached” to give open-ended answers to questions from customers when they asked what happened in VIP rooms.

“You’ll have plenty of fun upstairs,” the bouncer said he was told to say at one club. “If the entertainer feels comfortable and feels (the customers are) not undercover or law enforcement, then they’ll explain what extra things go on.”

Customers who expressed a willingness to pay for the more expensive VIP experiences were generally assumed not to be law enforcement, he said, “because one thing that all of these clubs know is that law enforcement is not going to spend more than $1,500 just to make an arrest.”

Looking the other way when it came to prostitution also extended to a tolerance for pimps, many of whom doubled as drug dealers, the bouncer said. He said that some clubs anticipated that customers would arrive expecting to be able to buy narcotics at the same time they were arranging for sex acts with dancers.

Investigation documents from the state Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control back up the man’s observations that dancers are a vital conduit for the drug trade at strip clubs. They often call the dealer, pass along the customer’s money, accept the drugs and pass them on to the customer, according to the ATC documents.

“There were times where (managers) would tell the entertainers that if they had a pimp or a boyfriend, they weren’t allowed in,” the bouncer said. “But there were a couple of instances where the pimp would be on good terms with the management or if they were supplying drugs.”

Asked how he knew they were pimps, he said, “It was pretty obvious when they say, ‘I’m a pimp.’”

Even if a sex trafficking victim is not using a club’s private rooms at the behest of a pimp, there is evidence that people working as prostitutes are using the clubs to meet potential customers. One trafficking victim, who asked her name not be used out of concern for her safety, said her pimp forced her to dance in clubs, but only made her have sex with customers when she was at home with him.

“I used to get told to find guys but I didn’t get pressured as much,” said the woman of her pimp.

At one club, the woman said, management suggested “there’s an easier way to make money.” She said management told her about the private rooms: “There’s a door you can close and they won’t come in.”

Ray Palazzolo, the senior general manager at four Bourbon Street strip clubs, said his staff is instructed to fire dancers who have sex or do drugs in private rooms. As part of a consent decree with the ATC, Palazzolo said cameras were installed and are monitored by management at the four clubs he oversees: Temptations, Lipstixx, Scores and Stilettos – the clubs Pamela Olano owns. Palazzolo said the cameras in the private rooms would be why managers indicated to the dancer that the door would not be opened while she danced.

“If anything should be going on and it shouldn’t, they go end the room immediately,” Palazzolo said of management. He said that after ATC consent orders in late 2015 required hiring “mystery shoppers” to test for illegal activity at the clubs, twenty employees were fired during the yearlong required monitoring. Palazzolo said he decided to continue monitoring after the consent agreement with ATC expired late last year. Since then, he said, another 20 employees have been fired.

The workers were fired for a variety of alleged offenses, including lewd conduct, drugs and solicitation of prostitution, according to Palazzolo and Herman, the clubs’ attorney. They declined to release documentation detailing the firings, citing privacy concerns.

Despite those actions, more sex trafficking victims seeking shelter at Covenant House have continued to report they worked at two of the clubs Palazzolo manages than at other Bourbon Street clubs, according to the shelter’s records. Since January 2016, eight women have told Covenant House they worked at Lipstixx under the control of pimps, and that their pimps required them to have sex in the club’s private rooms.

Sheri Lochridge, a case manager at Covenant House, said many of those dancers shared the same pimp. Three of the dancers were relatives and reported at Covenant House together; the other dancers sought refuge at Covenant House because they heard through word of mouth that they could receive services.

Lochridge said she also had four sex trafficking victims since December 2016 who said they had sex in private rooms at Temptations. Two of the four said they were under the control of a pimp at the time.

Asked why he thought sex trafficking victims had continued to report having sex in private rooms at clubs he managed, Palazzolo said, “I guess the nature of the business.”

“We can tell dancers, we don’t allow X, Y and Z – if we see it you’ll be terminated,” Palazzolo said. “It goes in one ear out the other for some of them. They’re out to make a score. Half of them unfortunately are on drugs, you know, and then they’re going to do whatever they can get away with.”

Palazzolo also questioned whether the women wanted to “badmouth” the clubs for other reasons, such as his decision not to hire them or “maybe she was working for us and” was fired.

Not all the clubs are the same. The trafficking victim who spoke with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune said she also danced at Larry Flynt’s Hustler Barely Legal and that club was run “by the book,” with customers not allowed to touch the dancers, and she said she was never pressured to perform illegal acts there. In some way, she said, the work at the club felt like an escape from her pimp, who was regularly physically abusive.

“I didn’t feel like it was as bad because I was performing and I had to perform with little to no clothes on but I didn’t have to have sex with people for money,” she said.

NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune asked for interviews from management at other strip clubs that were cited in 2015, identified as suspected trouble spots in law enforcement documents, or named by sex trafficking victims that sought help at Covenant House. Two clubs cited in the Trick or Treat raids, Centerfolds and Babe’s Cabaret, have closed. Dixie Divas did not respond to a request for an interview mailed to their registered agent in state corporate records. When a reporter last week visited Dixie Divas, a man who identified himself as a manager declined comment.

An attorney for Big Daddy’s, Jack Alltmont, said in a phone interview that the club had complied with a consent order reached with the ATC. Covenant House has not reported any additional victims having worked at Big Daddy’s and the club has not surfaced in records of law enforcement investigations after they were cited by the ATC in 2015.

FBI Agent Michael Forrester, who for years has investigated human trafficking in the French Quarter and throughout New Orleans, said that the allure of Bourbon Street checks several boxes for most pimps. The street is busy enough that they can hide in plain view while keeping an eye on the women under their control who are looking for customers, and they can use the clubs to recruit potential victims.

“To them, they’re living the high life so they’re there to have a good time and watch their property and make money while they drink and watch dancers,” Forrester said of the pimps.

Bourbon Street was one of two venues he was investigating along with a Homeland Security Investigation agent for sex trafficking when the Memphis pimps came to law enforcement’s attention. The FBI received a tip that two women reported missing from Tennessee were being trafficked in the Chef Menteur Highway motel The Riviera, Forrester said. After the two women were rescued, federal agents began surveillance on The Riviera.

They soon learned that the pimps were operating in what Forrester described as a “confederacy:” They were loosely organized, sometimes helping each other out with drugs or trading women. Some knew one another from Memphis, a city that several federal law enforcement officials said is part of a network used by traffickers that includes Houston and cities in Florida.

To recruit new women, the pimps were using social media, which has become a popular platform for pimps to lure potential victims, often with a promise of romance.

One victim was an 18-year-old woman from Memphis, whom NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune is not naming because she is the victim of a sex crime. The woman testified at the trial of Timothy “Lucci” Jones that she met him online during a particularly desperate time in her life.

In late 2013, running low on money and looking to get through what she described as a “rough patch,” she began exchanging Facebook messages with Jones, whom she knew through a friend from Memphis.

Jones told the woman that if she came to New Orleans, he would support her while she danced at Bourbon Street strip clubs. The woman agreed, arriving in New Orleans by train in late 2013, according to trial testimony.

By that time, Jones was pimping two other women out of the Riviera Hotel in New Orleans East, another pimp testified during the trial. Jones picked the woman up at Union Passenger Terminal and brought her to the hotel, sat her down, and broke the news.

“I thought it was going to be only dancing,” she said at Jones’ trial. Jones told her she would also be “turning tricks.”

First he took her to Bourbon Street and showed her around, introducing her to a few people. The next night, he sent her back out to Bourbon with his most trusted prostitute, referred to in prostitution parlance as Jones’ “bottom.”

While the women were working, Jones would hang out at a bar on Bourbon Street, the now-closed Last Call, according to trial testimony. During the trial, one pimp was asked what Jones would do while he was at the bar.

“Smoking and saying he just king of the rest of the pimps and saying he waiting on the bit—s to get through doing a date,” Laquentin “Nino” Brown testified. When asked what he meant about a date, Brown said, “Turning tricks. Waiting on his girls to get through turning tricks and stuff, making money.”

Last Call was owned by Guy Olano, according to ATC officials. The state revoked Last Call’s business license in 2015 after years of problems, including selling alcohol to minors, allowing prostitution and 42 counts of violations of improper conduct stemming from criminal activities, according to ATC.

When the victim from Memphis was first made to walk Bourbon Street, she wasn’t asked to have sex with anyone those first two nights, she testified. That changed on the third night. Jones wanted to try to “turn” her using what’s known as a “two-girl special.” The pimp finds a man willing to pay for two girls and pairs the new victim with an experienced prostitute like his “bottom,” who shows her the ropes with a customer.

The victim earned about $100 that night, which she said she turned over to Jones. When a prosecutor during the trial asked her why she gave Jones the money, she said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I was just going through something and thought I had found somebody that really liked me and, you know, would help me out.”

The victim soon realized that she had fallen in with a group of cruel and violent pimps, she testified. Jones slapped the victim on her third night on Bourbon Street when she didn’t make enough money, forcing her to stay out on Bourbon Street walking in the rain until 11 o’clock the next morning.

Pimps physically abusing the women they are exploiting is not uncommon, experts say.

Granville “Bear” Robinson, of Memphis, was sentenced to 24-1/2 years on sex trafficking charges in the same case. Forrester said he developed evidence showing Robinson struck a woman with a coffee pot and dragged another woman nude from a hotel room and beat her with a piece of wood in front of several other pimps.

Christopher “Gutta” Williams, also from Memphis, who was sentenced to 15 years on sex trafficking charges and cooperated in the federal case against Jones, admitted to shocking a woman with a Taser and fathering six children with prostitutes. Forrester said that to punish prostitutes, Williams was known for not allowing prostitutes to see their children – an accusation he denied at Jones’ trial.

Williams, in his testimony, said he became friends with Jones after the two were trying to settle an argument with some New Orleans pimps who were demanding a “draft,” or fee, to allow their women to walk on Bourbon Street. They consummated their friendship over a drug deal: 10 tablets of Xanax, according to Williams’ testimony.

Xanax was part of a secondary game for pimps on Bourbon Street. Laquentin “Nino” Brown, a Memphis pimp who was a protégé of Williams, had discovered that he could crush Xanax into a powder and have prostitutes under his control dose men who had already been drinking, Forrester, of the FBI, said in an interview.

One of Brown’s women was particularly adept at robbing customers, and Forrester said other pimps admired Brown for how lucrative his prostitution-turned-robbery business had become in New Orleans.

“The idea is you target guys that are inebriated, and the girls go up to them and basically flirt with them and they’re very touchy-feely,” Forrester said. “The thing about Bourbon Street that’s very interesting is that there’s a high degree of girls stealing.”

Forrester said one tactic Brown used was to have a prostitute drink with a potential client until he ran out of cash, and then ask him to go to an ATM machine where she would look over his shoulder to obtain the PIN number. Later, after stealing his ATM card, she would clean out his bank account, Forrester said.

Another tactic targeted men drinking on Bourbon Street. When a prostitute would find a man who was willing to take her back to his hotel room, she would slip Xanax into his drink and wait for him to become so intoxicated that he was unable to stop her from stealing from him, Forrester said.

Two girls may also work in tandem to steal from a man, Forrester said. For example, one prostitute would occupy the man while the other went through his belongings, stealing cell phones, laptops and credit cards. They would also target men wearing expensive watches.

“I had this one picture of Nino where he’s got several Rolexes all the way up his forearm, each one probably worth over $10,000,” Forrester said in reference to Brown. “That was the model they wanted, and the girls liked that model because they felt rather than just being a (prostitute), they were like a cat burglar.”

Foreign tourists, especially those from Europe and Australia, were a favorite target, because they would file a report with police to make an insurance claim, Forrester said, but were unlikely to return stateside to testify at trial.

“If it’s a loss, they’re embarrassed. They wake up and have a headache, and ‘What happens in New Orleans stays in New Orleans’ … kind of attitude,” Forrester said.

The dose-and-steal method the pimps used in the French Quarter was highly profitable. During testimony, Williams said one prostitute under his control made between $12,000 and $15,000 one night.

When Williams and Jones were arrested, police found a “skimmer” device that would allow the pimps to clone credit cards, though the pimps told law enforcement they had not yet obtained a machine that would allow them to create the new credit cards. They also recovered an AK-47 assault rifle with a bayonet attached, along with a Beretta handgun with an extended magazine. Williams in particular was known for always being armed, Forrester said, and had a reputation for using his firearms.

Lochridge, the case manager at Covenant House who works with human trafficking victims, said one prostitute told her, “Ain’t nobody lying on their back anymore. We’re robbing.”

In late June, Lochridge said law enforcement was investigating a female pimp who was forcing two juveniles to walk Bourbon Street in search of customers.

“You can see girls walking up and down, you can see them working the tourists,” Lochridge said. “They are very brazen and walk up to groups of men who are drunk, flirting with them, very touchy-feely. And you can see them walk away with them to a club.”

In recent months, Covenant House has stepped up their efforts to provide outreach in the French Quarter and at strip clubs, trying to identify underage victims dancing in clubs. The youth shelter also works with law enforcement to investigate tips.

But the FBI investigation that resulted in the prosecution of the Memphis pimps, which resulted in a total of seven convictions on trafficking charges, remains the most significant and extensive prosecution of human trafficking in the New Orleans area in decades. Jones was the only pimp who rejected a plea agreement and took his case to trial.

At sentencing, two of Jones’ family members pleaded for “mercy” for Jones, saying he had a difficult upbringing. But U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, as he sentenced Jones to life in prison, was unmoved.

“I don’t buy into the fact that you had a difficult life and deserve mercy,” Feldman said. “You didn’t take advantage of anything that you could have taken advantage of and you ruined — ruined — the lives of young women.”