Feds Bust Upscale Prostitution Ring

That is a headline the old man,a consummate publicity hound, would have killed for.

From the AFP
"New York authorities have broken up an exclusive international ring of prostitutes charging up to 5,500 dollars an hour for their services, according to an indictment unveiled by prosecutors.

Four people alleged to have run the "Emperor's Club" were charged with conspiracy to violate federal prostitution statutes, while two of them were also charged with laundering more than one million dollars in illegal proceeds.

According to prosecutors, the ring operated in cities across the United States and in London and Paris, employing more than 50 prostitutes who charged clients fees ranging from 1,000 dollars to more than 5,500 dollars per hour."

 Who needs to investigate really dangerous criminality when you've got sex, scandal and the possibility perhaps ( as J.Edgar sure would have done) of getting some dirty dossier material on a few of the rich and famous that might come in handy sometime.  Not to mention killer media attention. (Which is a hell of a lot better than having the media paying too much serious attention to, say, new information trickling out about National Security Letters and how much more they've been used than the government had let on).

Exciting stuff, but one has to wonder about the Bureau's priorities

"Several phone numbers associated with Emperors Club have been under surveillance by the FBI, which intercepted more than 5,000 telephone calls and text messages during the investigation, according to court documents.

Excerpts of those intercepted calls, provided in court documents, offer a window onto some of the managerial challenges that confronted the four defendants who allegedly managed the operation. In them, the managers discuss how some of the Emperor Club prostitutes had difficulty taking imprints of their clients' American Express cards, making it difficult to charge them. Prostitutes weren't always punctual in arriving at their engagements. There were scheduling conflicts to resolve caused by the photo shoots of the women who modeled during the day. And clients called in wanting to know what they should tell their accountants about the expenses they were racking up with the Emperors Club."

But at least we're all safer knowing for the moment there's a bit less upscale vice in the world. And I guess they needed a breather from all that terror stuff.