Escort-service owner pleads guilty to money laundering

[MC]

Barbara Tanner, a South Carolina woman who owned Exclusively Yours Escorts and operated it as an escort service in Richmond and other places, faces up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty yesterday in U.S. District Court.

An agreement with the U.S. attorney's office let her plead guilty to a single charge of money laundering, for which she also faces a fine of up to $500,000 at sentencing in March.

The indictment against her had been sealed by the court until yesterday.

Previously, three women who worked as telephone operators making dates for call girls from the operation's offices in Surfside Beach, S.C., pleaded guilty here to conspiracy to use facilities of interstate commerce -- the phone system -- in aid of racketeering.

Sarah J. Kashner, Rita McDonald and O'Neal Johnson, all of South Carolina, were sentenced to probation and no jail time.

Exclusively Yours Escorts provided prostitutes throughout central Virginia, in the Hampton Roads area, in Surfside Beach, S.C., and in Detroit. It also operated in conjunction with Class Act Entertainment of Novi, Mich., according to court papers.

The business operated from roughly 1998 to about November 2004.

Potential clients in Richmond, for example, would call an advertised toll-free number and reach an operator in Surfside Beach. The operator would arrange a meeting between the caller and an "escort" at some location in the Richmond area -- often, in a room at a hotel along the West Broad Street corridor.

The female companionship the service provided generally involved sexual acts.

Tanner and the other women indicted in the ongoing investigation were prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney David T. Maguire and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter B. Baruch.

Quelle

Dec 22, 2005