A Bethesda man whose phone number appeared on a phone bill of woman accused of running a high-end prostitution service said he rented his home to one of the call-girls and took phone calls from the alleged madam.
Deborah Jean Palfrey, 50, faces an arraignment Friday on federal racketeering and money laundering charges in connection with an escort service she operated that employed students from D.C.-area colleges.
Last week, Palfrey threatened to sell her list of 10,000 clients and 40 pounds of phone records to pay for her defense. She released a sample page on her Web site that included six-days worth of outgoing calls from August 1996, including several to the home of a Bethesda man who told The Examiner that he rented his place to a young girl who turned out to be one of Palfrey’s escorts.
“How do I know that she worked for Ms. Palfrey? Because I spoke to her when she called here,” said the man who asked to remain unidentified because he has considered filing a lawsuit against Palfrey. He would not provide any more information about his former roommate.
The bill that Palfrey put on the Internet contained 124 phones calls. Most of the numbers have been disconnected. Several were to the Marriot Wardman park Hotel in Cleveland Park and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Alexandria.
Palfrey’s attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley, said his client hasn’t decided how or whether she would sell the documents, but she’s in negotiations with several entities.
Palfrey, who lives in California, employed more than 130 women and earned $2 million from 1993 to 2006, according to the indictment.
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, court documents show.
Palfrey wrote an occasional newsletter to her women.
“We try ‘very hard’ to do things a step or two above that of our competitors,” Palfrey wrote in a 1994 newsletter. “We want the client to always enjoy his appointment and to never feel rushed!”
