Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Cecil Suwal, Temeka Rachelle Lewis & Tanya Hollander, Defendants in Eliot Spitzer's Prostitution Scandal
For a picture tour of the Emperor's Club VIP, click here.
The Accused
Let's take a look at the defendants tied to Eliot Spitzer's a.k.a. Client 9's hooker scandal. The four are:
Cecil Suwal, 23, in charge of model recruitment (Mark Brener's girlfriend) a.k.a. "Katie" or "Kate"
Temeka Rachelle Lewis, 32-year-old booker number one a.k.a. "Rachelle"
Tanya Hollander, 36, nutritionist by day and booker number two by night (see picture below) a.k.a. "Tania Hollander"
Mark Brener, 62, the leader of the Emperor's Club VIP, who was found with 2 Israeli and 1 US passports in his possession a.k.a. "Michael"
How much can you make running a high-end prostitution ring?
According to the FBI affidavit, which makes for surprisingly good reading, the four defendants who ran the Emperor's Club VIP raked in only a paltry $1 million during their four years of operations. The money (cash, wire transfers, money orders, and American Express charges) was deposited in two bank accounts registered to QAT Consulting Group, Inc. and QAT Group, Inc.
If so, they are probably the most poorly paid "consultants" in the world.
However, some of their proceeds were kept at home, with $600,000 and 19,000 euros in cash seized when authorities raided Brener's home.
How much did the models make?
Checks and wire transfers were made out to 50 prostitutes in the US and Europe totaling more than $400,000. At an average of $8,000 per model over four years, it shows that the job paid surprisingly poorly despite the supposedly high-end clintele. Of course, it's possible that the bulk of payments were done using cash.
How much time can you serve?
Brener and Suwal face up to 25 years while Lewis and Hollander are looking at 5 years if convicted. Definitely not a good ROI investment.
Mug Shots
It's been difficult finding pictures of the defendants. So far only Hollander seems to have been spotted (she's on the left, lawyer on right):
We'll update with pictures of the other defendants as we find them.
