Read more at The Press of Atlantic City…

Woman who lured Robinson testifies she did not know he was an Atlantic City councilman

Kristyn Haino said she didn’t know what she had gotten herself into.

The former prostitute agreed to perform a sex act on a man who turned on his friends, she testified Tuesday. She said didn’t know that man was an Atlantic City councilman, or that his former friends would use a tape of the act to try to force him to resign.

Haino testified Tuesday at the trial of three men accused of hiring her to seduce Councilman Eugene Robinson and give him oral sex then secretly taping it. The tape was allegedly part of a failed blackmail attempt to get him to resign.

When Robinson handed her his business card after their tryst that night in November 2006, she had one thought: “Holy crap,” she said. “It was way out of my league.”

Haino was an addict supporting her daily heroin and crack habit through prostitution when she said Howard Bailey – who she knew as Shadee – introduced her to his brother, Floyd Tally.

She testified that Tally said he wanted her to perform a sex act on a friend turned “backstabber.” He would be back in a couple of days to pick her up, he said.

When you can’t trust an escort, who can you trust? Read the sad story at Montana’s News Station…

Woman to be sentenced for blackmailing Bozeman developer

A woman who pleaded guilty to blackmailing a prominent Bozeman developer over an alleged prostitution ring under investigation by the FBI is scheduled for sentencing this week.

Shannon Clark, 36, of Bozeman told U.S. District Judge Justin Quackenbush that she had an affair with William Martel for four years, during which time he was financially generous, helping her pay rent and other bills. After Martel ended the relationship in June 2008, Clark threatened to tell the FBI about the money and sex unless he gave her $10,000 a month for six months.

Clark faces up to a year in prison, an additional year of supervision and up to $100,000 in fines when she is sentenced on September 17.

Clark’s attorney, Morgan Modine of Missoula, is seeking a probationary sentence, saying a friend of Clark’s who was working with the FBI encouraged Clark to ask Martel for money. That friend was also reportedly involved with Martel intimately after he broke off the affair with Clark.

Martel has never been charged. Federal officials would not say if the investigation into the prostitution ring continues.

Read the whole story at Scotsman.com…

Brothers jailed for blackmailing married man over affair with prostitute

Stephen Dobson, 39, and John Dobson, 36, from Portobello, Edinburgh, had denied blackmailing the 55-year-old.

But a jury, who heard that they threatened to expose his relationship with a sauna worker, found the brothers guilty of extortion.

They were also convicted of attempting to extort £2,000 from another man.

Judge Lord Philip today said members of the public find the offences “sinister and disturbing” and he said he had to reflect their concern over the “particularly nasty crimes”.

Jailing them each for eight years at the High Court in Edinburgh, he told the pair: “You have both been convicted of crimes which, as far as I am aware, are not frequently met with in these courts, as other crimes are.

“They were crimes which ordinary people find particularly sinister and disturbing. There is a cowardly aspect to them as well.

“The victims of the crimes were, for one reason or other, vulnerable people – maybe because of their own weakness – but nonetheless they were vulnerable.”

The bank worker told the trial he was warned that if he did not cough up the money, the brothers would tell his wife about his regular visits to a sauna.

Readers of Insider Escort Secrets know how to minimize the risk of hobby-related extortion. Read the whole story at The Boston Herald.

‘Secret’ hooker’s probation woes piling up
By Laurel J. Sweet

Ever since the woman, an alleged prostitute, was convicted of extorting $280,000 from a high-rolling married trick to keep his name out of the papers, her bad girl act has risen to diva proportions.

An allegedly potty-mouthed woman was “threatening staff” June 4 at the Boston halfway house she’s assigned to after they bagged her with a cell phone and for secreting food in her room, a federal probation report states.

Consequently, employees of the McGrath House – where she was sent last month because U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf believed she could no longer be trusted under house arrest in Dorchester – are subjecting the hooker gone haywire to “ongoing personal searches to ensure her compliance with community program rules.”

According to a report probation filed Wednesday with Wolf, “[She] accused staff of restricting her inappropriately and suggested that others in the house should also be restricted,.” “Staff refused to discuss other members in the house, and directed her to leave the room. She refused to follow the directive and continued to press staff for a date when her restriction would be lifted.”

The summary continues, “[She] was ultimately informed that her restriction would last one week, and was directed again to leave the room. [She] refused for a second time, and when the staff member left the room herself, [she] followed her to another room. At that point, [she] Robinson reportedly became irate and and began swearing and threatening staff.”

At the U.S. Probation Office’s request, Wolf declined to punish the woman further.

Robinson pleaded guilty in February to selling her silence to a 60ish wealthy businessman she’d carried on a sex-for-hire relationship with between December 2007 and June 2008. She faces imprisonment if she divulges the john’s identity in the next three years.

Another angle on that alleged blackmail scandal in Edinburgh. Read the whole story at The Edinburgh News…

Prostitute denies helping blackmail ‘pervert and pest’
By Brian Horne

A VICE girl told today how she was accused of helping her boyfriend blackmail a punter who was besotted with her.

The woman said that although she “took advantage” of the 55-year-old bank worker who showered her with gifts and thousands of pounds she had nothing to do with the alleged extortion.

A trial has heard how the bank worker handed over £10,000 to two brothers who menaced him with a knife and threatened to tell his wife about his three-year liaison with a “masseuse” in an Edinburgh sauna.

The single mum – who called herself Cindy while working at Carol’s sauna – said she was arrested five days after the cash is said to have been handed over outside a Royal Bank of Scotland in Castle Street, Edinburgh, last October 17.

…

In court today the woman admitted she had told the police “blatant lies” and, at first, even denied knowing the alleged victim of the blackmailers.

She claimed she was scared her family would find out about her sauna work.

Although charged with abduction and extortion by police, the charges were later dropped.

But the alleged extorters have blamed her for making phone calls to the bank worker demanding cash. They say she got £1100 and they were collecting it for her.

…

The bank worker was sitting in court to hear the woman describe him as a pervert and a pest who bombarded her with text messages but a nice man.

“I think any man who has to come to a sauna and pay for sex is a bit perverted,” she said.

She told how the bank worker began to meet her outside the sauna, driving her home after work, did odd jobs such as cutting the grass, and gave her money she needed to buy heroin.

He gave her gifts. “A bike, a necklace, jewellery, flowers, rabbit hutches, anything. He paid my bills,” she said.

She agreed he was generous and spent a lot of money on her – a total of £2000 she said.

Read the whole story at The Scotsman…

Bank worker denies lying about blackmail to cover prostitute payments

AN IT worker denied yesterday that he invented a story about being blackmailed to cover giving £1,100 to a prostitute.

The 55-year-old told a jury he had been forced to hand over cash to two men who threatened to tell his wife about his affair with a sauna worker.

However, under questioning by defence lawyers, the man admitted he had made no attempt to raise the alarm, and that one of his alleged attackers fell asleep waiting for him to get money at a bank.

The lawyers suggested the accused had simply been collecting the cash on behalf of the prostitute, but the man rejected the claim that he had willingly handed over wads of notes and that it was “more palatable” for his wife if he made himself out to be the victim of a crime.

The two men deny extorting £10,000 from the man on 17 October last year.

The High Court in Edinburgh has heard that the man met the masseuse at Carol’s Sauna in Edinburgh, in 2005 and would pay up to £140 a week for her services.

Read the whole story at The Billings Gazette…

Woman pleads guilty to blackmailing developer

A woman pleaded guilty Friday to blackmailing a prominent Bozeman developer over an alleged prostitution ring under investigation by the FBI.

Shannon Michelle Clark, a 36-year-old Bozeman resident, told U.S. District Judge Justin Quackenbush that she had a sexual relationship with William Martel for four years, during which time he paid her rent and some other bills with cash and business proceeds from his construction company, Martel Construction.

After Martel ended the relationship in June 2008, Clark threatened to tell the FBI about the money and sex unless he provided her with “severance pay” of $10,000 a month for six months.

“He asked me to lie to the FBI about our relationship being sexual,” Clark said.

Martel, who is the namesake of Bobcat Stadium’s Martel Field at Montana State University, knew he was under investigation and asked Clark to tell the FBI he helped her out financially because she was a “struggling single mother,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Racicot.

Racicot said in court the FBI was investigating “whether or not there was a prostitution ring operating in Bozeman and if William Martel was a client of that ring.” He also said the FBI has interviewed Martel, who is a Bozeman community leader.

Martel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read the whole story at Boston.com…

Prostitute who extorted money to serve full sentence
Violated terms of home confinement

A Canton prostitute who admitted in federal court last year to extorting $280,000 from a prominent local businessman in exchange for keeping their liaisons secret was ordered yesterday morning to serve out the remainder of her six-month sentence in a halfway house, after admitting to a federal judge that she violated the terms of her home confinement.

The woman, dressed in a gray pantsuit, appeared nervous yesterday as she sat next to her lawyer, Mark Smith, and when asked by Judge Mark L. Wolf if she had anything to say before he announced his decision, she initially declined. But after conferring with Smith, she stood up and said, “I just want to say that I am sorry and will obey the conditions.”

Wolf then ordered the woman to check into an undisclosed halfway house by noon next Friday. Her release date is scheduled for Aug. 17. The order was the result of a joint recommendation by Smith and prosecutors. Wolf then reprimanded the woman, saying at one point that she appeared not to be listening to him and that she probably committed more than one violation of her home confinement.

“I’m very concerned that I’m seeing you again. There would have been probable bases to see you in March when there were problems with the telephone. I’m disturbed about where you were on [April] 3d, and I’m concerned you weren’t truthful with the probation department.”

…

Last year Wolf accepted a controversial plea agreement that gave the woman, 29, less time behind bars than the two to three years federal sentencing guidelines recommend and that forbids her from revealing the identity of the man she extorted with threats of public disclosure.

The businessman’s identity has not been revealed. He has been described by authorities as a wealthy married man in his 60s from the Boston area who has funded startup companies and is active in charitable circles. Authorities say he paid the woman for sex from about January 2007 to June of last year.

A month later, according to the FBI, the woman called the businessman with a threat to reveal their relationship unless he gave her cash. The businessman gave her $80,000 outside a Newton hotel, and when she said that was not enough, he gave her $200,000 outside a store in Dedham, according to court records.

When she demanded $300,000 more, the businessman contacted a lawyer, former US attorney Donald K. Stern. Robinson was arrested in August; she eventually pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud.

Stern previously said that his client wants to donate the $280,000 in restitution owed

The hobby has its dangers.  Read the whole story at Boston.com…

Paid sex, then threats bring ID debate
Woman charged; man yet unnamed

He was a prominent businessman from the Boston area, married and in his 60s, who later told authorities that he had merely wanted a “last hurrah” – sex with a young woman.

She was a 27-year-old prostitute from Canton who was happy to oblige, providing sex for cash through an “escort service” he found in the Yellow Pages, according to federal authorities. One encounter led to another, and then another, and so it went for 18 months.

Then last July, shortly after the liaisons ended, the FBI said she called the businessman with a startling threat: Someone had offered her $60,000 to publicly reveal their relationship. If the businessman wanted her to keep her mouth shut, it would cost him more than that.

The businessman quickly handed her $80,000 in cash outside a Newton hotel, and, when she said that was not enough, another $200,000 outside a Costco in Dedham, an FBI agent said in an affidavit. But when she demanded $300,000 more – “that money I ask for is nothing to u,” she allegedly said in a text message – the businessman contacted a high-priced lawyer with considerable influence in the federal justice system in Massachusetts: former US attorney Donald K. Stern.

What followed, say several legal specialists, illustrates how a prosperous individual with high-level connections can marshal the formidable resources of federal law enforcement to turn the tables on a criminal and preserve his good name – even if he himself had repeatedly broken the law by paying for sex. In contrast, the alleged prostitute’s name is all over court records.

“Why should he be given any type of preferential treatment?” said Bernard Grossberg, one of several Boston criminal defense lawyers critical of the deference shown the businessman. “I’m sure there are many other victims who don’t want their names publicized. And paying for sex is a crime in Massachusetts.”

Other veteran criminal lawyers said, however, that the prosecutors’ studious efforts to keep the businessman’s identity secret were justified because the government wants to encourage other people to come forward if they are victims of similar extortion schemes.

“They’ve done a balancing act here,” said Frank A. Libby Jr., of Boston, a defense attorney and former federal prosecutor. “And society’s interest in removing the market for extortion has been viewed as far more important and significant than the everyday concerns about prostitution.”

The wheels were set in motion on Aug. 7, two days after the demand for $300,000, when Stern arranged for an FBI agent and a prosecutor who works for US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, the top federal law enforcement official in the state, to meet with the businessman at Stern’s office on the 46th floor of the Prudential Tower.

Although federal authorities rarely pursue cases of blackmail involving prostitutes and customers, the FBI arranged to have the businessman tape-record a series of phone calls to the prostitute, including one from Providence, according to the affidavit. That call crossed state lines, ensuring that the prostitute’s alleged extortion demand was a federal crime, a tactic that several former federal prosecutors said is a common practice.

Federal agents arrested the startled woman, Michelle Robinson, on Aug. 13 in a Costco parking lot after the businessman gave her a bag she thought contained $300,000.

This week the last chapter of the sordid story will probably be written when Robinson, now 29, pleads guilty in court to wire fraud and threats in interstate communications and accepts what is by all accounts a remarkably lenient, if unusual, sentence.

Under a tentative deal between federal prosecutors and Robinson’s lawyer that must be approved by a judge, she would be sentenced Friday to six months in jail – the time she has already spent locked up since her arrest – and be immediately freed. That is far less than the 27 to 33 months recommended in federal sentencing guidelines for such a crime, said several former prosecutors.

Robinson would have to pay back the $280,000 – which might be a challenge given that she was declared indigent by the court – and serve six months in home confinement.

And she will also spend three years on supervised release, during which she must obey an extraordinary condition: She is forbidden from disclosing the businessman’s name.

Another look at the dangers of flying blind in the rough world of commercial sex. The Fresno Bee reports…

Man blackmailed after finding prostitute online
By Paula Lloyd

A Fresno County man who found a prostitute through the Web site Craigslist soon found himself fending off a blackmail attempt.

Fresno County sheriff’s investigators have arrested three men in connection with the blackmail attempt, and investigators believe others may have been victims of the scheme.

The 58-year-old man contacted sheriff’s investigators after he received calls on his cell phone threatening to make his visits to the prostitute public unless he paid $3,000, sheriff’s Capt. Rick Hill said. He declined to identify the man. “We don’t want other victims to be afraid to come forward.”

Arrested were Paul Beck, 25, and Charles Rector, 32, both of Clovis, and Kevin English, 25, of Fresno. They were booked into Fresno County Jail on extortion and conspiracy charges.

Hill recounted what the man told investigators:

He arranged two meetings with the same woman — the first about nine months ago and the second in early August. He began receiving threatening phone calls Aug. 18. One caller said, “We know what you did.”

“It appears one of the suspects was a friend of the prostitute, and they concocted this,” Hill said.

Sheriff’s detectives identified the suspects and followed their directions to leave $3,000 in a shopping cart in a parking lot of the River Park shopping area. One suspect was arrested when he began walking away with the cart. All three suspects were arrested late last month.

It’s not uncommon to find prostitutes advertising on the Internet, Hill said. “There are thousands of prostitutes” listed on Web sites, he said, and sheriff’s investigators have made arrests by checking some of those listings.

The prostitute wasn’t charged with prostitution, and the man wasn’t charged with soliciting, Hill said, because deputies “didn’t see it happen, and it’s a misdemeanor.”

The investigation is ongoing, and it is unclear whether the prostitute will be charged in the extortion.

Investigators believe the suspects have blackmailed other men. Those with information on this case, or who believes they have been victimized in a similar case, are asked to call the sheriff’s special investigation unit at (559) 452-1295.