Spitzer rare only in that he got caught

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is not the first to find himself at the combustible and often career-ending intersection of two of the world’s oldest professions: prostitution and politics. But if it were not for the suspicious financial transactions he allegedly orchestrated to pay for his trysts, Spitzer, like nearly all clients of high-priced call-girl services, probably never would have been caught, according to vice cops, sociologists and other “sex for sale” experts.

Ultra-expensive prostitution rings like the Emperors’ Club VIP operate in such a rarefied environment of pricey hotel suites, private estates and limousines that they rarely are taken down by law enforcement authorities, they say. Local police departments, which investigate the vast majority of prostitution cases, concentrate mostly on the streetwalking hookers who are easier to identify and arrest.

Authorities don’t have the resources or manpower to set up the elaborate undercover operations needed to gather evidence to prosecute high-end rings. Most, like the one allegedly used by Spitzer, have sophisticated screening processes for their prostitutes and clients, communicate via text messages and set up benign-sounding front companies.

And when authorities do manage to get the goods on such enterprises, it’s usually the operators who get publicly identified and charged, not the prostitutes themselves. The well-heeled clients also get to stay anonymous, their identities and secrets kept by those who have been paid handsomely for their discretion.

Even when authorities stumble upon a tryst between a high-priced prostitute and her client, it’s virtually impossible for them to prove that the two negotiated a price for sex as opposed to companionship, a hurdle necessary to make a criminal case, said Ronald Weitzer, a George Washington University sociology professor who researches prostitution.

“There is a feeling of invincibility among the rich and powerful” using these high-end prostitution services, said Weitzer, author of “Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry.” And for good reason, he said: “You almost never hear about the customers’ arrests.” There aren’t even good numbers on how many enterprises like the Emperors’ Club are in operation. “No one knows, because it’s so invisible,” Weitzer said.

Det. Mark Gilkey has seen it all as a prostitution unit investigator for the Washington, D.C., Police Department for the last 26 years. But he said he cannot remember more than one or two politicians or celebrities who have been caught using such services and arrested or publicly outed.

Gilkey ran an undercover storefront investigation for a few years in which D.C. police were able to see the credit card receipts for various prostitution rings, including the names on the invoices. “It was shocking,” he said. “The amounts [of money] and also the people -- movie stars, celebrities, people in politics, the sporting world.”

But the names of the clients never became public, which is not unusual in such cases, he said. And most clients never get caught at all.

“The bottom line is: It’s a circle you have to be in. A lot of it is done by referrals, and where there is trust, you are able to get introduced into the network,” Gilkey said.

The case against Spitzer offers an unusually detailed glimpse into how such a prostitution ring operates, much of it contained in a richly detailed 47-page criminal complaint and affidavit filed against the four alleged leaders of the Emperors’ Club.

In some ways, the Emperors’ Club seems to be a haphazard start-up run by small-time entrepreneurs out of storefront offices in New York and New Jersey and the front seat of a Honda Odyssey minivan. But the operation also appears to be sophisticated in many ways and indicative of call-girl rings that cater to society’s most rich and powerful.

The “girls” were marketed on a slick website -- with rankings measured in “diamonds” and charges of up to $5,000 an hour. And the four alleged leaders set up an elaborate system to make sure the prostitutes showed up on time, looked dazzling, delivered the goods, made their clients happy and stayed for the full hour, day or weekend.

The Emperors’ Club is unlike many of the highest-priced prostitution operations -- charging $1,000 and up -- in which women, and sometimes men, work for themselves and only take on clients whom other trusted clients have vouched for, said Sudhir Venkatesh, a Columbia University sociology professor who has interviewed many prostitutes and written extensively on the subject.

Liaisons with high-priced prostitutes have spelled the end of a career in those rare instances when someone with a recognizable name was caught and publicly identified. Those cases tend to stick in the public’s memory, but they represent an almost undetectable fraction of prostitution busts, according to Gilkey and others.

In Los Angeles, a succession of Beverly Hills and Hollywood madams kept the press busy, and the American public titillated, throughout much of the 20th century. In Washington, several ranking congressmen have been caught having relationships with women -- or men -- who were half their age in exchange for money, favors or ghost jobs.

Randall L. Tobias, the top foreign aid advisor in the State Department, resigned two years ago after acknowledging that he patronized the elite escort service of “D.C. Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey. After federal authorities charged Palfrey with operating a prostitution ring, she threatened to disclose the names of potentially thousands of wealthy, influential and famous clients.

“The tentacles of this matter reach far, wide and high into the echelons of power in the United States,” Palfrey wrote in one court filing, vowing to subpoena her customers in an effort to prove that her employees provided only legal massage services. That scandal quickly went away.

The police had little to do with most of the other instances in which the rich and powerful have been tripped up by prostitution scandals. Dick Morris, a top advisor to President Clinton, resigned from his reelection campaign in 1996 after a tabloid newspaper published photographs of him with an elite prostitute on a Washington hotel balcony.

And Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Rancho Santa Fe) was plied with prostitutes by private contractors seeking government contracts in recent years, but that only came out during his lengthy prosecution on unrelated corruption charges.

“At that end of the market, you pay a few thousand more [and] you don’t have to worry about surveillance,” Venkatesh said. “The police don’t go after these individuals.”

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josh.meyer@latimes.com