The Transaction

A new, faster way to ruin your credit. (Just add hookers and blow.)

by Jeff Deeney

It all began one night on adultfriendfinder.com. You know how it goes with Web sites like that. But let me lay it out, just in case:

1. Lonely guy — let's call him John — logs on, looking for some quick company.

Photo By: Michael T. Regan (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

2. He finds what he considers the horndog Holy Grail, a Web site where all the girls are loose, looking for fun and live nearby.

3. He quickly realizes that the local nasty girls of AFF are ready to fuck tonight, just like he hoped, but there's one caveat: It costs money.

4. Already mentally committed to the whole idea, he goes ahead and drops a line to one of Philly's finest out-call ladies.

5. This particular guy has an itchy nose. He doesn't know what "party girl" means, exactly, but he wants to find out.

Cue the prostitute, a rough-looking white girl. The K&A type. She's not exactly Playboy material but at this late hour, a Club- or Oui-caliber girl will do. The John asks the hooker, "Before we get started, let me ask you ..." He pauses, a little nervous, worried he's about to say something out of line that might cause her to get up and walk. "What else do you got?" He lets the question hang, knowing she might pack up shop, hoping she won't.

"What is it that you want?"

That, my friends, is the $16,000 question.

What you do is offer the girl a $250 tip after you've done your business. This is how you let her know what you're looking for and that you can pay for it. She won't come out and tell you that she's holding at first; she'll hint that for $250 extra, you'll be a happy man. Thirty of the $250 is an actual gratuity on the fuck; the other $220 buys you an eight ball of high-quality powder coke. Sure, that's expensive, even for good blow, but you haven't heard the best part. Seriously, this is going to fucking kill you:

The whole thing goes on your credit card.

That's right: powder on plastic. She takes your card, puts it on this portable hand processor she carts around in her purse, places a carbon credit form over top and gives it a swipe. Then, she plugs it into the nearest phone jack and calls in your card to make sure it's good. Thirty days later, your statement comes back with a transaction from the discreetly named "Ludlow Clinic." It's the kind of name that might not raise too many eyebrows on an expense report. If you're a convention-goer, you might be able to talk your wife out of her concerns by assuring her of a late-night stop at an out-of-town pharmacy.

The regular customer likely racks up a couple of transactions per night on his statement for every Friday and Saturday of the month. If you're like the customer I know, a mid-20s Center City white professional with some money to burn, you make one transaction after the next, partying the night away, hogging up the girl's whole shift until she finally has to leave long after the sun is up. You buy a bunch more blow before she leaves to make sure you're covered for the next couple of days. Sure, it's an expensive habit, but don't worry — when the account statement arrives, just don't open it. (Every addict knows that if you don't open a bill, it doesn't exist.)

The girl never runs out of drugs and she never gets tired of helping you snort up the shit you bought off her. Three, four, six eight balls; it doesn't matter how much you want, she's got you covered, and there's a reason for that. Maybe it's her driver, the gigantic slab of glowering, gun-strapped blackness who waits outside in a Town Car the whole time, who is the real supplier. Maybe the escort service she works for simultaneously operates as a drug ring and uses its call girls as vehicles for distribution. Let me tell you, though: Any way you cut it, all those transactions add up.

Here's some simple arithmetic: $220 x 4 = $880 in one night. Maybe that much blow will last you a couple of days, but it doesn't take too long to burn down a $10,000 line of credit. And that's just the coke.

Once you've factored in all the fucks and tips, you're looking at some major financial damage. In fact, by the end of that ugly and out-of-control month and a half, John calls his favorite girl over and asks her for the standard $220 eight ball on arrival (it's out in the open by this point). She runs his card through her little doodad then says the words he had hoped never to hear:

"It's denied, baby."

A flash of anger. "Fucking run it again."

"I did, baby, three times, this card ain't no good."

"Run it ... FUCK."

John spills the contents of his wallet onto the coffee table and comes up with another card. Another $6,000 of untapped purchasing power, locked and loaded and ready to disappear in a white puff.

"Run that one, it's good, I fucking know it is."

And good it is. For about a week.

But then that card gets denied, too. So, John decides that maybe it's time for him to head to rehab, toting along a major coke problem and a truckload of high-interest credit card debt.

One could say that cocaine and hookers are a classic combination. For a certain kind of man, they're like dinner and a movie, a regular staple of the entertainment diet. When you add credit to the equation, though, you add an unpredictable variable that a lot of guys can't control.

This is not one of those drugs that active users have an easy time walking away from at the end of the night. If there's more space on your credit card, and there's a naked woman dangling a baggy full of blow in your face and telling you to keep going, you're going to keep going.

As a former addict who's written about his addiction for City Paper [Cover, "One Man's Journey Through, and Out of, His Oxycontin Addiction," June 1, 2006], my mind reels at the prospect of the party that never has to end, one where costs don't seem real because they're just numbers punched into a keypad and sent through the wall. But the transactions are very real.

A month later, there it is in black and white, the rude awakening that stays with you for years — unless you've got the funds to bail yourself out. But something tells me that if you just burned down a $10,000 line of credit on hookers and blow in a span of a few short weeks, you probably aren't the kind of guy who can pay off the balance at the end of the month. You're fucked. Like John, though, maybe you can figure it all out after rehab. It's like they tell you when you get there, "First things first."

So, what is this Ludlow Clinic that allegedly dispatches out-call girls with shoulder bags packed full of eight balls and credit card scanners to horny cokeheads in Center City? Is it part of a larger operation that supplies coke and hookers citywide? Are there similar operations working right now in other cities around the country?

The out-call girl with credit card capacity is old news, as are call girls who sell cocaine on the job. It was just a matter of time until escort services got ballsy enough to do both.

A heavily accented Asian woman who answered the phone at the Ludlow Clinic verified that she was the manager and agreed to answer some questions. I told her I was working on a story for City Paper about the coke-slinging escort who takes Mastercard. She went as far as to confirm, in broken English, that my friend John may have received out-call escort services from the Ludlow Clinic and that those services may have, in fact, been paid for with credit. But what about the cocaine? "No, no cocaine," she said, "not from here, no."

I told her that John had credit card statements with multiple transactions for cocaine and escort services, all with the name Ludlow Clinic next to them. Isn't that a bit of a coincidence? "No, no cocaine, not from here, no."

A little Web research reveals that the Ludlow Clinic is a storied Center City massage parlor that closes and reopens under a different name with every new Vice Squad crackdown. The oldest reference to it online is in this paper in an August 1995 article titled "No Mo' Hos." It detailed District Attorney Lynne Abraham's crackdown on brothels after the high-profile shuttering of a legendary Sansom Street brothel called Bella Feminina. In the story, an employee of what was then called the Gentleman's Retreat at 1800 Ludlow declined to comment on what went on there, but it was common knowledge that they offered a little more than the massage service they advertised.

Later and more explicit references to 1800 Ludlow St. can be found on World Sex Guide, a Web site where Johns from around the globe congregate to talk about the current status of their hometown sex trade. The address where the Ludlow Clinic currently resides pops up in numerous reviews over more than a five-year span.

In 2001, the business operated under the name Dreamland Relaxation Center using the Asian massage parlor model and garnered the following favorable reviews from users "Badboy" and "Engineer":

Tue Jun 19 2001

Submitted by: Badboy

1800 Ludlow Street charges the typical Philly rate of $150 ($50 house fee/$100 tip). Spent time with a lovely Korean girl named Apple. Table shower followed by a massage. Very long dark hair and a very cute face and smile. Very sultry voice as well.

Wed Apr 25 2001

Submitted by: Engineer

I strongly recommend the Dreamland Relaxation Center 1800 Ludlow St. $150 got me a nice assisted bath and massage, followed by half and half with a very lovely, polite and skillful Korean girl named Kim. I felt like a million bucks coming out.

Later that year, however, came sad news from "Madman," who informed the online John community that the Philly PD put an end to the good times:

Sat Nov 24 2001

Submitted by: Madman

All the Spas in Ludlow ST are closed. 1800 was closed a long time back, there was one newly opened in 1812 Ludlow. I checked yesterday. There was a notice from Police department saying to close the business. Be safe if you are hunting for Philly spas.

The work stoppage was apparently only temporary, as is often the case with downtown massage parlors. A recent story in the Daily News documented a vice bust of a similar operation at 11th and Sansom streets that was taken down 19 times in 13 years. Over time, the 1800 Ludlow location reappeared in online sex discussion forums under the names "Lemona" and "Heaven." The latter incarnation apparently specialized in something called "Shiatsu Torture Massage" (which, according to the online reviewer at usasexguide.com, really hurts).

Somewhere along the line, a new service materialized operating from the 1800 Ludlow address called "Massage At Your Location." A Web site appeared that resuscitated the old Gentleman's Retreat name, this time at 1816 Ludlow. The site advertised a "lovely all-American staff" and promised available escorts.

The most recent review on World Sex Guide, from 2005, finds 1800 Ludlow operating once again under a different name — this one rings a bell — and apparently still doing swimming business with its "washy washy" style services, according to "Bill E. Boye":

Ludlow Clinic @ 1800 Ludlow. Through the door, you go upstairs where mamasan will take $60 to get in the door. An extra $20 to mamasan ensures that she'll take care of you properly, even if she doesn't know you from a previous visit. ... A lady will take you upstairs to a private room for your time. ... After I exploded into her, she let me lie down in her for a moment to catch my breath before she went to get a warm towel for cleanup. A very nice experience indeed.

Indeed.

What we have here is a long-established prostitution provider that may be paving the way for Philadelphia-area escort services with what is a larger, recent shift in the escort business model. The Ludlow Clinic is simply keeping step with the current nationwide convergence between escort services and drug delivery.

Recent news shows that there are many other escort agencies around the country that bundle drug delivery services with out-call prostitution. In September 2005, Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett and his Bureau of Narcotics Investigation scooped up eight individuals accused of running a $1 million drug and prostitution ring in Allegheny County. The Pittsburgh escort service was run by a madam who recruited and scheduled appointments for the call girls; her muscle man, onetime NFL first-round draft pick and former Los Angeles Raiders defensive tackle Bob Buczkowski, drove the girls to meet the Johns. The service took up to 300 phone calls a day. They also took credit cards.

A total of six prostitutes with the ring were involved in the sale of cocaine to clients. The madam and muscle man Bob sold cocaine directly to undercover agents, oftentimes using the escort agency's cell phones to arrange transactions. The purchases ranged from 6 grams to an ounce.

I called Attorney General Corbett's deputy press secretary, Nils Frederiksen. Asked if the bundling of drug delivery and escort services is becoming a statewide trend, Frederiksen said Buczkowski's case came to the attorney general's office as a drug-trafficking problem, and it was only after the investigation began that they discovered the prostitution ring working in tandem with it. The level of organization at work between the prostitution and drug-trafficking elements in the Buczkowski case was a first for Pennsylvania and was the reason for the attorney general's involvement.

Drugs and prostitutes tend to go hand in hand, but Frederiksen pointed out that vice is normally handled by local authorities. His office doesn't see vice cases unless there's something extraordinary at work. But is there a statewide trend toward operations like Buczkowski's? He wouldn't say one way or the other, but he alluded to the historical cross-pollination among illegal activities like drug dealing, prostitution and gambling, and he didn't seem surprised by my story of cocaine, escorts and credit transactions.

"One vice leads to another," Frederiksen said. "It's like a chicken-and-egg scenario."

Case in point: In April 2006 in northwest Florida, State Attorney Bill Eddins launched a campaign to shut down what he called "fronts for prostitution that spun off into trafficking in cocaine and other major crimes." In taking down a series of operations that bundled out-call services with drug delivery, the Escambia County police reported having seized 15 pounds of pot, about a half-kilo of coke and more than $100,000 in cash.

In an interview with the Independent News of Pensacola, one of the ring's prostitutes reported, "They pressure you to do illegal actions, things against your own beliefs. There was violence. There was drugs. People would call just for drugs. They'd say, 'Are you a party girl?' and pay the escort fee, just to get drugs."

In what could be seen as a testimony to how widespread the trend of bundling illegal services truly is, the Department of Justice reported in December 2006 that it took down an escort service that operated under seven different names and used call girls to peddle crack cocaine to Johns in Anchorage, Alaska.

It doesn't get much more widespread than that.

I met an officer from the Philly PD narcotics squad for lunch, and we had a talk while hunched over a deep bowl piled high with chicken wings and celery sticks. I started by laying out the scenario — the coke, the hooker, the running of the credit card and the whole cycle repeating to the tune of more than 10 grand. While I talked, his eyes got wider and wider. By the time I finished, they were like dinner plates: "Are you fuckin' serious?" he asked. "That's fuckin' crazy."

Asked if he ever encountered anything like that, a convergence of illegal enterprise where multiple services were bundled together and the transaction conveniently resolved electronically, he said he hadn't. In fact, he'd never heard of anything close, but added that he thought it was brilliant. By using credit, the paper money trail that normally draws major attention and requires intensive laundering was eliminated. He thought for about it for a minute, glancing up at the ceiling and letting the wheels turn before telling me a story about one night on the job in the Fox Chase section of the Northeast.

He said the scenario rung a bell. The girl, the driver with the Town Car, the coke; he scooped up a guy like that once. This driver dude they had their eye on had dropped off a call girl and was parked out front of the John's place, waiting. Narc squad scooped him up and he had some coke. They brought him in and the kid admitted to making a living chauffeuring hookers and drug dealers. But this kid wasn't running credit transactions — he was strictly small-change. The possession charge didn't stick and eventually, the kid walked. That's the closest thing he'd heard to an operation like the Ludlow Clinic, and he didn't exactly start working undercover narc last week.

Then his phone rang. He held it up to check the number. There was a flash of recognition and a smile as he flipped it open. He talked quietly into the phone, repeating the details that I'd told him. It was another narcotics officer on the line. The other officer's response to the tale of the coke-toting hooker who takes plastic?

"Get the fuck outta here."

A phone call to Philly PD's citywide vice Lt. Charlie Green didn't yield much more insight than my meeting with the narc officer. I painted the same picture one more time: escort girl, cocaine baggies, credit card doodads. Has the vice squad encountered anything like this?

"Nah, we haven't seen that."

He elaborated that cocaine turns up with some frequency during vice busts but in small amounts for personal use.

"So, nothing organized," I asked, "nothing that would suggest a merging of drug delivery services and prostitution?"

"Nah," he reiterated, "not that it isn't happening. We haven't seen it."

His last comment reminded me of something else my narc squad contact told me on the way out the door after our lunch-hour powwow:

"Sorry I couldn't help you on this. I guess that's interesting in itself, though, that we don't know anything about this stuff yet."

S o whatever became of poor John, our ill-fated, plastic-wielding coke fiend? He made it through rehab, but one could say he didn't take it so seriously. He came home a couple of weeks later with a new girlfriend he met inside, but it doesn't take a certificate in addiction counseling to know that rehab romances are star-crossed by default.

John took a half-hearted stab at 12 Step recovery, but he kept one foot in the bar where his new girlfriend spent her days binging after an almost-immediate relapse. He was behind in rent, so he decided to move back to his mother's in Bucks County. He landed a plush freelance Web design gig that netted him a couple of fat paychecks. He paid off a bit of debt. Things weren't looking so bad. He figured that at this rate, in maybe seven or eight years he'd be free and clear of the financial wreckage caused by those six weeks of rockstar partying he couldn't afford.

Then John drank. He met another girl at another bar who partied like him (the rehab girlfriend was already long gone). Once he was good and lubed, he started thinking about getting high. John and the new girl left the bar. Next thing you know, John was at his mom's house demanding $500 from her. She told him to get lost, that she was fed up with his bullshit and to leave. John did leave, but he threw a fit first, yelling and screaming and causing a scene.

Then they left, John and the new girl, riding off into the blazing sunset of addict insanity, carrying saddle bags loaded with bad debt.

(editorial@citypaper.net)