Prostitution

Female Phillies Fans are Easy

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Susan Finkelstein Phillies sex.JPGWhat would you do to score World Series tickets? If you aren’t willing to do what this Philadelphia Phillies fan had in mind, then you aren’t really trying. Earlier this week, the New York Post reported:

A rabid Philadelphia fan — apparently believing the “P” on the team’s cap stands for “prostitution” — was busted yesterday for offering sex in exchange for World Series tickets, police said.

Susan Finkelstein, 43, was nabbed after allegedly soliciting an undercover Bensalem, Pa., cop who answered her innuendo-laced craigslist ad seeking the coveted ducats.

CBS has a full photo spread of Susan Finkelstein, in case you have two spare tickets for Saturday.
That’s right, she needs two. One for herself, and one for her husband.
UPDATE: Actually, it seems that she no longer needs tickets for the next game. (Gavel bang: commenter.)
Allegations after the jump.

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Lawyer of the Day Last Week: Seeking a Sexy Secretary

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Secretary.jpgEd. note: We gave this a shout-out last week in non-sequiturs (second item), but it’s egregious enough to merit more discussion.

Biglaw attorneys frequently complain about how hard it is to date given the amount of hours they devote to work. Attorneys at a small immigration firm in Chicago may have encountered a similar dilemma.

Perhaps inspired by Maggie Gyllenhaal’s cinematic portrayal of a sex-enjoying legal secretary, Samir Zia Chowhan of Chowhan Law allegedly advertised on Craigslist, in the “Adult Gigs” section, for a secretary with benefits. From Legal Profession Blog:

Loop law firm looking to hire am [sic] energetic woman for their open secretary/legal assistant position. Duties will include general secretarial work, some paralegal work and additional duties for two lawyers in the firm. No experience required, training will be provided. Generous annual salary and benefits will be provided, including medical, dental, life, disability, 401(k) etc. If interested, please send current resume and a few pictures along with a description of your physical features, including measurements. We look forward to meeting you.

Many of you will recall that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan waged a war against Craigslist’s “Erotic Services” section earlier this year, claiming that there was rampant prostitution there. By her doing, the section was taken down and replaced by this “Adult Gigs” section, which is supposedly more closely monitored for illegal activity. But in our surfing of the section, we saw quite a few ads like Chowhan’s, including ones like this: “I’m seeking a young lady who would like to have some fun with me, possibly on a regular basis, in exchange for some help with bills or whatever.”

At least Chowhan was a little more discreet in his May 2009 ad. But when one woman responded, he made it clear why he had listed the job in the Adult Gigs section.

He defines “additional duties,” after the jump.

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A Blind Lawyer and His One-Eyed Monster Claim Prostitute Swindled and Discover Discriminates

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blind item AboveTheLaw legal blog.jpgOne ATL reader sent this article along, writing:

I haven’t had time to read the article yet, but the headline is ‘Blind lawyer says hooker took him for 8Gs.”

Yes, that sounds like it would be of interest to Above The Law. From the Philadelphia Daily News:

John F. Peoples, 60, was steamed after he learned that the woman who he says he hired for sex allegedly overbilled his Discover card by $8,600.
So he sued her for damages and the credit-card company for alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, claiming that it had not sufficiently protected its blind customers.

Ginger Dayle, the alleged prostitute, denies being a lady of the night, instead insisting that she was actually giving Peoples Pilates lessons. Peoples says though that he is “barely able to walk, let alone do Pilates” and that sex is “one of the few exercises I get to do.” Whether for Pilates or sexual play time, Dayle bills at Biglaw rates: Peoples says he agreed to pay her $275-$375 per hour, but that she started charging him $550-$800 per hour. He signed the receipts, without realizing she had upped her price.
He reported the fraud to Discover but it chose to look the other way.

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Closing the Door Loop On Cristina Warthen

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Cristina Schultz.jpegFor those of you considering prostitution to pay off your law school debts (you know who you are), consider the cautionary tale of Cristina Warthen. As we have previously reported, Cristina graduated from Stanford Law School in 2001. But instead of going into Biglaw, Cristina adopted the porn name “Brazil” and turned herself into a high-priced escort.
Granted, if she graduated today, Cristina might have been able to get some public interest deferral money for her “service.” But this was a long time ago.
And for a while Cristina was a smashing success. She even landed a rich husband, AskJeeves founder David Warthen.
But the Warthens were hit hard by the recession, and the couple split. Meanwhile, the government came looking for $313,000 in back taxes from Cristina’s sultry side business.
The ABA Journal reports that there is a resolution in Cristina’s case. What sentence did she get?

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Deidre Dare Proposes Prostitution as a Layoff Solution?

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deirdre dare expat allen and overy.jpgDeidre Dare is one of our favorite laid-off lawyers. She was working in Russia for Allen & Overy, and decided to pen a salacious online novel about her expat adventures. The literary critics at A&O were not pleased with the novel, which featured lots of drinking, sex, drugs, donkeys, and dwarves.

After she lost her job at Allen & Overy, she sued the firm.

Dare’s still in Moscow, where she pens a column for the Moscow News called sExpat. Recently, she wrote that money is tight and that she’s considering various options to increase her cash flow. Among some of her proposals are robbing banks, becoming a jewel thief, blackmailing someone, or prostituting herself. From the Moscow News:

Now, when I decided to go into the law, I wanted to take an expensive preparatory course for the law school admissions test. At the time, I was suffering severe “cash flow problems” and I asked my father to pay for the course, which he refused to do, considering it a waste of money.
So, in order to raise the cash, I decided to become a “high class” whore.
I’d heard that this was something pretty Ivy League students sometimes did for money.

Sometimes the non-Ivy types do it too. So what are Dare’s rates?

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Lawyer of the Day: And Her ‘Real Pimpin’ Law Professor Boyfriend

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Robert Birmingham Professor Robert L Birmingham Above the Law blog.jpgWay back in 2007, a time so long ago that firms actually made offers to summer associates, we mentioned the story of UConn law professor Robert Birmingham. The professor showed a clip from the movie Really Really Pimpin’ in Da South, and got in a little bit of trouble. The film is (apparently) a “prostitution training film” that contained an interview the professor wanted his students to see. Professor Birmingham was forced to take a leave of absence back then, but he’s back on campus.
Unfortunately for the professor, now his girlfriend is in trouble. Heather Kaufmann — who is not only Professor Birmingham’s girlfriend but also represented Birmingham back in 2007 — has been charged with a litany of crimes. The Hartford Courrant reports:

Heather Kaufmann, 33, surrendered to police Monday and is facing charges of second-degree forgery, third-degree larceny, third-degree identity theft, credit card theft, receiving goods illegally, charging less than $500 on a revoked credit card and five counts of fraudulent use of an ATM….
According to court documents, police said that in the days following the death of her aunt on Dec. 7, 2008, Kaufmann used her aunt’s ATM card and wrote a check on the account that, together, came to more than $3,200.

Birmingham isn’t just tainted by the romantic association with Kaufmann; he allegedly also received some of the misappropriated funds.

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Is this cartoon about the University of Illinois’s law school, or Villanova’s?

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Check it out over at the Jack Higgins Gallery.
Update: Yes, commenters, we know the cartoon is about U of I. Please resist the lawyerly impulse to take everything so literally. Thanks.
Earlier: Dean Mark Sargent — You Can Call Him John
Prior ATL coverage of the University of Illinois College of Law (scroll down)

Dean Mark Sargent — You Can Call Him John

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Mark Sargent Villanova Law Dean Mark A Sargent.jpgIt appears that Mark A. Sargent’s abrupt resignation as dean of Villanova Law had nothing to do with the Peanut Girl controversy, or his more recent email faux pas.

It’s more likely that it had to do with an Eliot Spitzer problem: patronizing prostitutes. But at least the public-minded dean helped the police crack a local prostitution ring!

Ex-dean helped police, report says [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Earlier: Farewell, Dean Sargent: ‘Peanut Girl’ dean resigns at Villanova.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus Tax Revenue

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How should the federal and state governments deal with their depleted coffers? Here’s one idea, from Nick Gillespie of Reason.com, in yesterday’s New York Times:

cannabis_leaf.gifLegalize drugs and then tax sales of them. And while we’re at it, welcome all forms of gambling (rather than just the few currently and arbitrarily allowed) and let prostitution go legit too. All of these vices, involving billions of dollars and consenting adults, already take place. They just take place beyond the taxman’s reach.

Legalizing the world’s oldest profession probably wasn’t what Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, meant when he said that we should never allow a crisis to go to waste. But turning America into a Sin City on a Hill could help President Obama pay for his ambitious plans to overhaul health care and invest in green energy. More taxed vices would certainly lead to significant new revenue streams at every level. That’s one of the reasons 52 percent of voters in a recent Zogby poll said they support legalizing, taxing and regulating the growth and sale of marijuana.

Are ATL readers more or less libertarian than the general public? In a prior poll, almost 70 percent of you voted in favor of legalizing prostitution.
We know how L.A.’s dopest attorney feels — but what’s your opinion of pot? Vote in this poll, and debate in the comments.


Paying With Our Sins [New York Times]
Earlier: A Seminal Question: Should Prostitution Be Legalized?
Adventures in Lawyer Advertising: ‘The Dopest Attorney’

Disbarred Stanford Grad Trades Counsel for Coitus
And is now trying to set up shop in South Carolina?

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Stanford_Law_School_Logo.pngWhen we first got a tip that a Florida lawyer had been disbarred for making a client pay her fees with sexual favors, we thought, “Ho hum. Another crazy Florida lawyer.” Then we Googled the pro boner attorney, James Harvey Tipler, and found out that the low-life lawyer has a sterling Stanford degree.
According to his Justia profile and his listing on the California Bar Association website, Tipler is a graduate of Yale University and Stanford Law School. We hope this doesn’t make Stanford fall even lower in the U.S. News rankings.
Tipler is not the first Stanford Law graduate to get mixed up in sex work. But making an 18-year-old client pay for legal work on her parental custody case with sexual favors is a new low.
From the Florida Supreme Court order disbarring Tipler:

Tipler charged his client a fee of $2,300 and entered into a fee agreement with her that allowed a “credit of $200 for each time she engaged in sex with Respondent” and a “$400 credit if she arranged for other females to have sex with him.” For his misdeeds, Tipler was charged with racketeering and four counts of prostitution. He ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of solicitation of prostitution.

Fellatio in exchange for filings was not Tipler’s only offense. He’s gotten into trouble in many other ways, and not just in Florida. He’s got a record in California and Alabama, and we suspect he may be trying to set up shop in South Carolina now. More after the jump.

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And is now trying to set up shop in South Carolina?“

Lawyer (Turned Escort) of the Day: Nina Baccala

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prostitution above the law.jpgTimes are tough, and sometimes those with JDs have to find sources of income beyond their legal pursuits. Sometimes they try to increase their cash flow through illegal pursuits. Such as prostitution. (This isn’t the first time we’ve covered the phenomenon.)
Putting your life in the hands of a random John has bigger potential downsides than handing your body and mind over to Biglaw. From the Massachusetts Lawyer Weekly:

In a story similar to that of the so-called Craigslist killer, a Massachusetts lawyer claims she was the victim of an attack at knife point in Providence last week after placing an ad offering escort services.
A Providence Journal story states that Nina C. Baccala met William V. Lapierre after advertising escort services in the Providence Phoenix. When Lapierre allegedly tried to rob Baccala with a large kitchen knife, she reportedly fended him off with a chemical spray.

Baccala passed the Mass Bar last year and clerked for Superior Court Judge Raymond J. Brassard, says the Massachusetts Lawyer Weekly. She has a JD and an MBA, and still had to go the lady-of-the-night employment route. This economy really sucks. More on her background and how she fought off her attacker, after the jump.

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Umm … So, There’s This

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So, you know how we at Above the Law love to bring you something a little bit later in the day for our west coast and late night readers? I bring this up lest you think I have masturbatory ulterior motives for the timing of this post.

So, this lady is apparently a law student somewhere in Miami:

Click below the fold for the rest of this story. (Arguably not safe for work, children, Jesus, reasonable people, Princess Leia, or PETA).

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