A federal judge Friday held off ruling on whether the woman accused of running a high-dollar Washington prostitution ring could sell the identity of her clients and call girls, but prosecutors argued that any money that she makes should be forfeited to the government.
Deborah Jean Palfrey says she needs to sell the list of 10,000 clients and 40 pounds of phone records to pay for her criminal and civil defense cases.
Authorities have seized about $1 million in property and indicted her on racketeering and money-laundering charges. Federal prosecutors want to prevent Palfrey from releasing the information, which they say “is detailed and sensitive.”
During an arraignment Friday, Judge Gladys Kessler confiscated Palfrey’s passport and ordered her to wear a electronic-monitoring ankle bracelet.
Afterward, instead of ducking the media, Palfrey, 50, teased them. Her civil attorney Montgomery Blair Sibley promised that Palfrey would speak to the media outside the federal public defenders offices two blocks away.
Palfrey, wearing a long velvety coat, dark glasses and bright red lipstick, clung to Sibley’s arm as he led nearly a dozen cameramen and reporters through Judiciary Square, stopping once to pose under the statue of John Marshall, the jurist who shaped American constitutional law and made the Supreme Court a center of power.
Sibley urged the journalists to wait. “You won’t be disappointed.”
Reporters waited for more than an hour before Sibley came out to announce they’d have to wait 40 minutes more. In the end, Palfrey read a statement saying her business was a legitimate escort service and that if any of her employees were involved in prostitution, she didn’t know about it.
Sibley said he’s received more than a dozen offers to buy the business records in more than a week.
Palfrey, who lives in the Bay Area of California, employed more than 130 women and earned $2 million from 1993 to 2006, according to the indictment.
It said she recruited her girls through ads at the University of Maryland newspaper, looking for women at least 22 years old who had some college education.
