Escort Service Operator Gets Prison Term of 13 Years

A Buena Park escort service operator convicted of 39 counts of pimping and pandering was sentenced to 13 years in prison Friday, the stiffest sentence ever handed out for a prostitution-related offense in Orange County.

Alfonso Lopez, 44, told the court at his sentencing that he still does not believe that what he was doing is illegal.

But Superior Court Judge William F. McDonald’s answer was that Lopez already had one conviction on similar charges. The judge said the maximum sentence given Lopez should be a warning to other escort service operators.

‘Prostitution Operations’

“We know that other escort services are still in operation in Orange County, and that most of them, if not all of them, are simply prostitution operations,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Kenneth O. Chinn. “If that’s the case, then it won’t be long before those people will join Mr. Lopez.”

Lopez’s lawyer, Michael A. Leversen, argued that it was unfair to give Lopez such a stiff sentence when people who commit violent crimes often get less. Lopez’s crimes had no victims, he said.

But Chinn disagreed. In the 1980s, with AIDS a possibility through multiple partner sexual contact, prostitution is no longer a victimless crime, he said. He also referred to several prostitutes who are deeply involved with drugs.

Also sentenced Friday to five years in prison was Wendy Beth Haskins, 33, who lived with Lopez and was his chief assistant. Although she was convicted on 37 similar counts, Chinn said prosecutors did not urge the maximum sentence for her because it was Lopez--not she--who ran the escort service.

Calvin Walker, an associate of Lopez, is still awaiting trial on similar charges. Richard R. Eshun, operator of a separate service, was given a four-year prison sentence last February in a similar Orange County case.

Lopez was arrested in April, 1986, after an investigation by the Anaheim Police Department into his escort operations, which ran under various names such as Exotic Escorts, He and She Escorts, Adam and Eve, and Chi Chi Escorts.

Nearly a dozen prostitutes, under grants of immunity, testified at his trial that in almost all cases they had sex with the male clients arranged through Lopez’s service.

Lopez told The Times at his preliminary hearing last September that he could not understand why he was being singled out after 10 years in the business.

“I just have an answering service,” he said. “What they (the women) do after that is their problem. I have no authority over what goes on.”

But prosecutor Chinn didn’t buy that.

“The women were sent to men’s motel rooms at 3 o’clock in the morning, for one hour, and collected $150. He knew what was going on,” Chinn said.