Joseph Menn writes in The Los Angeles Times 11/27/05:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cards27nov27,0,1380063.story?page=1&coll=la-home-headlines
[Ruth Parasol] worked briefly in a personal injury law practice before joining her father in a business that handled billing for phone-sex lines.
She became a fixture at adult-industry gatherings.
"When I was coming up in '98 and '99, I would see Ruth at all the trade shows and we would hang out," said Evan Horowitz, who heads an online porn network called XPays. "I remember her being very bubbly and happy and nice. I should have dated her."
In the 1990s, Parasol advised Seattle phone-sex entrepreneur Ian Eisenberg. He went on to mail fake "rebate" checks for $3.50 to millions of households. The fine print said that by cashing the checks, recipients agreed to pay as much as $29.95 a month for Internet service. The Federal Trade Commission sued and won an order for $17 million in reimbursement.
Parasol and an Eisenberg protege named Seth Warshavsky then invested millions of dollars in phone-porn companies that were sued by North Carolina and Nevada authorities for alleged improper billing and collection practices that included threatening to seize a person's property.
In North Carolina's case, a judge ordered a firm co-founded by Parasol to pay $270,000. The Nevada case was dropped after the company filed for bankruptcy protection.
In one of their ventures, Parasol and Warshavsky were part-owners of a 1-900 and long-distance operation called Starlink Communications. Starlink's former president, George Holland, said he met Parasol only twice.
Before their first meeting, he said, he assumed that any woman in the "99% male" phone-sex industry would be a crone. Instead, he found himself in the room with a quiet and extremely well-dressed young brunette.
As federal rules about phone calls became stricter, the companies went out of business. Warshavsky changed his approach to Web pornography.
By January 1996, Richard and Ricarda Parasol owned 49% of a holding company that funded Warshavsky's best-known venture, Internet Entertainment Group, which distributed a sex video made by actress Pamela Anderson and rocker Tommy Lee.
Ruth Parasol co-founded IEG, according to a person close to her, but Mendelsohn said she held stock in it only briefly.
Ruth's father and sister sued Warshavsky in June 1996, claiming he reneged on an agreement to buy out their share of the business. Ruth negotiated a settlement, according to the family's attorney in the case, Bradley Keller.
...Some who dealt with Warshavsky were less fortunate. In a later case, several former staffers accused him of routinely overbilling IEG customers. Facing large unpaid debts, Warshavsky eventually fled to Thailand. He could not be reached for comment.
...As the company [Starluck Casino which became iGlobalMedia which became Party Gaming] grew and prepared for its public offering, Parasol kept up her connections to porn specialists, including the controversial Yishai Habari, a major Internet traffic broker.
Habari was appreciated by porn publishers for paying handsomely when they referred Web surfers his way. From January to May this year, as PartyGaming was trying to build its share of the online poker market ahead of its IPO, Habari directed the company's successful Internet marketing program, which pays other websites to refer players.
About five years ago, though, Habari was directing traffic to porn websites that were part of a $650-million billing scam prosecutors described as the most profitable enterprise under the control of New York's Gambino crime family.
According to interviews with a dozen government officials, business partners and employees of the once wide-ranging operation, Habari sent people to porn websites that asked for credit card numbers — ostensibly to ensure that viewers were at least 18 — and then racked up bogus charges. Habari's company operated from the same floor as one of the Mafia fronts.
Federal prosecutors brought charges in 2003, and a mob captain, a soldier and four associates pleaded guilty in February. Habari was not named in the indictment. Parasol's spokesman said that when she suggested her old friend Habari for a top job at PartyGaming, she believed that Habari had been only "a consultant to a consulting firm that provided services" to the Gambino operation.
Habari did not respond to several requests for comment. He left PartyGaming in the spring.
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