Lawyer Charged with Laundering Prostitution Profits Through Reform Group
Police have charged a New York tax lawyer who owned the Hot Lap Dance Club with laundering prostitution profits from the club through a voter reform group he founded.
Charges against lawyer Louis Posner include money laundering and promoting prostitution, the New York Times reports. He told the New York Daily News in a jailhouse interview that he is “shocked, shocked” by the prostitution allegations.
“I’m just flabbergasted. I’m shocked, shocked,” he told the newspaper. “The Hot Lap Dance Club is one of the cleanest clubs around.”
He was arrested Thursday along with his wife and 19 others, who also faced prostitution-related or money laundering charges. He told the Daily News his wife was not involved with the club and never did anything more than make brownies for the staff.
Police allege patrons of the club in Hell’s Kitchen paid as much as $5,000 for sex with dancers in private rooms. Proceeds were allegedly deposited into accounts of Voter March, an organization formed after Albert Gore lost the closely contested 2000 election to George Bush.
New York lawyer Edward Hayes, who represents several of the defendants, said many of the women who worked at the club “are just young people that need to work nights and pick up a couple of bucks,” and they don’t do anything illegal.
He said many of the club’s clients are wealthy people, but he doesn’t know if they are prominent. Patrons had to have a membership card and were charged $50 at the door.
One of the club’s dancers was “busty, streaked-blond porn star Alexia Moore,” the New York Daily News reports in a separate story. Dancers reportedly referred to Posner as “Daddy.”
Posner was “once known as the king of nuisance lawsuits,” the Daily News story says. He sued his son’s nursery school in 1992 for letting the 4-year-old boy run out of the classroom. The strip club was in the news in March when a securities trader claimed in a lawsuit he was injured by a lap dancer whose shoe hit him in the face.
