With pornographers getting prosecuted for obscenity, how exactly is it that agencies like Bella Models and sites like The Erotic Review get no love from the authorities. They aren't just some low key operation, they are heavily promoted and not quiet at all about what they are doing.

While certain pornography may be deemed obscene by the courts, there's no doubt the escort agencies are engaging in prostitution-- an illegal activity. So how is it at all just that people like Jeff and Max have to spend millions to defend themselves, but these big time, heavily promoted agencies are getting off Scott free?

I really don't think they're getting off "scott free;" hasn't there been a bit of pressure on TER for sometime from a far range of authorities?

I just think its too big of an issue (for authorities) to deal with and legally its just so much tougher to effectively battle an escort agency then say your average hooker on the street (that "paying just for my time" line holds up in court as well as easily arguing entrapment).

Or look at the DC Madame affair; look how much dirty laundry came out on tons of high ranking politicians. Consider this: spilling the beans on client lists is the first thing agencies do when caught, is it worth the risk for authorities to bust them? Do they really want to deal with collateral damage when that Pandora's Box of a Little Black Book and its rich clients is opened for the world to see? Rich people generally use escorts like TER and Bella's, not poor johns.

Open up any Yellowpages and look for Escort agencies. Open up any weekly newspaper in hundreds of cities and glance at the ads for in and outcalls (from everything from women to grannies to groups to guys to trannies). They're everywhere and I've always felt there was a gentlemen's agreement between most escorts and agencies (who do seem to practice safe sex and generally solid business practices surprisingly) and authorities not to bust them; would they rather have those girls hooking on the street for a fraction of the cash or in the privacy of their homes away from causing trouble for the populace?

I just think its an issue too large for any local jurisdiction to effectively deal with and the Feds are way too busy with obscenity, child porn and the such. They may bust a few madames, but those escorts will just be working again so soon after anyway, not to mention the possible shitty PR of busting girls working their way through college or mothers trying to make a living as an escort.

Sure there might be a few local busts, especially for single escorts on Craig's list, but it will be a while before anything big is done in my opinion, and there will be plenty of warning signs.

TER and other review sites are in a different class then the agencies. The Big Doggie board owners were busted in a huge sting a few years ago, but the prosecution went sideways after there was a determination that the board postings were protected speech.

Here's a recent news story about it:

Quote:

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Master Sgt. Bruce C. Woodbury, head of the vice unit of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Tampa, Fla., would like to be the biggest threat to escort review Web sites, but he acknowledges that he isn’t. Nor is he likely to be any time soon.

The Hillsborough vice unit pioneered the technique of registering with escort sites and posting bogus profiles when it launched Operation Flea Collar in 2002, targeting Big Doggie, which is in its back yard. Vice officers started their own fake Web page in order to join Big Doggie, and they almost immediately were flooded with solicitations for dates.

Eventually, authorities in Hillsborough and in Orange County, who joined the investigation later, brought more than 50 felony racketeering, procurement and obstruction charges against Charles S. Kelly of Tampa, the 300-pound “Big Dog” for whom the site is named; his business partner, Steven E. Lipson of Boca Raton; and 11 others. Police said in charging documents that they were raking in $30,000 to $80,000 a month from facilitating prostitution.


The postings on Big Doggie are protected speech; what the police must produce is proof of actual illegal conduct. That means they need witnesses in open court. But when authorities could not persuade their six star witnesses to give up the confidentiality they had been promised, a judge dismissed the cases against Kelly and Lipson.

“There’s not much motivation on their part” to be witnesses, Woodbury said of men caught up in prostitution investigations. “Frequently, they’re married men, professionals, and they don’t want anyone, including their wives or business associates, to know. They’re very reluctant to testify in open court.”

Big Doggie remains in business, but it’s not very likely that the Hillsborough vice unit will try again to shut it down, Woodbury said, because of the significant strain on manpower and other resources such a sting demands.

“As technology changes and as computer programs become available to the general public that can check driver’s licenses and tag numbers and phone numbers for a nominal fee, it’s very difficult for us to stay ahead of that curve,” he said. “If a bad guy is technically astute and computer-knowledgable, it makes great difficulty for us.”

Multiple suspicions
Notwithstanding Woodbury’s reassurances, escorts themselves presume that rating sites, especially The Erotic Review, are crawling with cops.

“It’s almost like a flare for law enforcement, like: ‘Hey, check me out. Bust me. Or try to bust me,’” said Helen, an escort in the West. “They’ve really concentrated a lot of their effort on Internet directory sites like Big Doggie, Erotic Review, Craig’s List. They kind of go down the list and try to see who they can get.”

“Is it dangerous? Yes,” said Robyn Few, executive director of the Sex Workers Outreach Project in San Francisco. “Every police officer has access just like you do.”

In postings on rival Web sites, both The Erotic Review and Big Doggie are widely criticized by escorts and their clients for not alerting their users to the identities of police officers posing as customers.

“DO NOT POST ANY PRIVATE REVIEWS ON THIS BOARD!” says a warning about Big Doggie on the Sexwork Cyber Resource Center, which is based in Phoenix. “It is well known that vice cops read it for leads to sting and entrap even if nothing illegal is being done.”

Executives at Big Doggie did not reply to requests for an interview, but David R. Elms, president of The Erotic Review, said he was aware that police occasionally registered as fake customers on his site.

Elms maintained that it didn’t happen nearly as often as escorts and their customers believed, adding that law enforcement had asked for information about the site’s members only once. The company’s attorneys “worked it out,” he said, providing no further details.

Elms said he had no choice but to keep quiet even when he learned of active stings on his site: “We can’t impede an investigation. It’s a felony.”

In any event, The Erotic Review’s user forums and other channels for feedback mean the site effectively polices itself, he said, so vice officers (in addition to menacing or unreliable clients) are quickly found out. “The community tends to get the word out faster than we ever could,” he said.

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

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SOURCE

TER has also worked with the po-po in the past. Just Google TER and Melissa Wolf.

Bella Models has been in trouble with LE before under the name of Nicci's Girls. Bella/Nicci is the same person. She disappeared for about 2 years to get away from the heat before resurfacing.