AppId is over the quota
A high-profile Manhattan lawyer with links to accused madam Anna Gristina was raided Friday by investigators who hauled away boxes of paperwork.
The seizure at veteran attorney David Jaroslawicz’s office came as an accountant and two young women accused of prostitution were also implicated in the sensational case.
Jaroslawicz, who has produced several plays, found himself starring in the biggest legal drama in town when detectives descended on his lower Broadway building.
He is tied to the upstate home where Gristina lives with her hunky husband and four kids — and, according to a well-placed source, to the E. 78th St. building where she allegedly ran a $10 million brothel.
As the case unfolded, he hired top-flight legal eagle Ben Brafman, who insisted “nothing illegal” had gone on.
“I spoke to the DA’s office,” Brafman said. “They told me he was not a target of the investigation. That’s it.”
Jaroslawicz, 65, has represented women in sex suits against Brett Favre and the Sultan of Brunei. During the go-go days of the first Internet boom, he carved out a niche representing women who were sexually harassed at dot-coms.
"A lot of these guys think they're the new masters of the universe," he told the News back then. "They mix up reality and virtual reality and start treating women like objects."
Now he’s tangled up in the prosecution of Gristina and matchmaker Jaynie Mae Baker, who are accused of selling women to high-powered men for $2,000 a night.
Jaroslawicz owns a 20-acre country retreat in Monroe, N.Y., right next to the property Gristina, 44, rents. Records list him as the “manager” of the company that owns property, too.
A law-enforcement source said he is also being probed in connection with the upper East Side building where Gristina allegedly had a stable of beauties service rich and powerful johns.
Records list Diana Ruhl, 42, and her husband, Jonathan, as principals in the corporation that owns the building. She is a lawyer from Ridgewood, N.J., whose family has real-estate interests. She declined comment.
Prosecutors have said in court that the owner of the E. 78th St. love nest is a male “lawyer friend” of Gristina who essentially functioned as her partner.
“[He] invests her money, helped her set up her business and helps to launder her money," Assistant District Attorney Charles Linehan told a judge last month.
"He has basically locked money away for her should this ever happen so she will have money when she comes out of it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment