Seattle strip-club magnate indicted

Longtime strip-club owner Frank Colacurcio Sr., his son and four associates were indicted Tuesday on federal racketeering, money laundering, mail fraud and prostitution conspiracy charges, the latest in a long line of brushes with the law for the notorious Seattle crime figure.

In a grand jury indictment unsealed Tuesday, the 92-year-old Colacurcio and his associates are accused of promoting prostitution at four Seattle-area nightclubs run by the family's management business.

"It's been going on for a number of years," U.S. Attorney Jeffrey C. Sullivan said in a news conference on the steps of the federal courthouse. "These men made millions of dollars exploiting young women ... hundreds of young women."

The government is seeking forfeiture of three clubs owned by the Colacurcios plus $25 million, the amount authorities believe the defendants earned through prostitution and other illegal dealings. They could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted, Sullivan said.

Dancers had to pay $70 to $130 a day to perform and were told they could earn money from "private dances" in semi-secluded booths, but many if not most found they could not cover those payments without also performing sex acts, he said.

Sullivan would not estimate the total business done at the clubs or how much appeared to be legal but said that after four years of investigation, federal agents know of no bigger prostitution ring in the Seattle area.

Dancers and club managers were dissuaded from reporting prostitution, those who were arrested or caught in acts of prostitution were repeatedly allowed to return to work in the clubs, and receipts from the sex trade were laundered through various bank accounts, according to the indictment.

Investigators also secretly recorded racy conversations between the younger Colacurcio and dancers in which they talked about rampant sex at the club.

A woman who answered the telephone at Talents West, the Colacurcios' management office, and asked that her name not be used, said no one from the business would comment. John W. Wolfe, a lawyer who has represented Colacurcio Jr. in the past, did not return a telephone call.

Colacurcio Sr. has a rap sheet that dates back to the 1940s and he was identified as a racketeer in hearings before a U.S. Senate organized crime committee in 1957.

Last year, the Colacurcios pleaded guilty to felony criminal charges in Seattle's 2003 "Strippergate" campaign-finance scandal in which they secretly funneled thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions through friends, relatives and business partners to the re-election campaigns of three Seattle City Council members. The scheme occurred shortly before a vote on a key rezoning issue involving a strip club.

The Colacurcios and their associates remain free pending arraignment July 24 in U.S. District Court, said Emily Langlie, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office.

The indictment identified the strip clubs as Rick's in Seattle, Sugar's in Shoreline, Honey's in Everett and Fox's in Tacoma.

The government is seeking forfeiture of Honey's, Sugar's and Ricks, the largest, all owned by the Colacurcios. The owner of Fox's has not been linked to wrongdoing, Sullivan said.

He said the government did not attempt to seize the clubs immediately because "this organization has some legitimate business and revenues ... a strip club is a legal business," so the U.S. Marshals Service would have had to maintain operations until the case was resolved.

"They really don't want to run strip clubs," Sullivan said.

The charges include racketeering conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to use interstate facilities for prostitution and 12 counts of mail fraud.

The four clubs and the Colacurcios' homes and offices were raided by FBI agents on June 2, 2008. At the time, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit that Colacurcio Sr. continued to pay his own dancers as much as $1,000 for sex.

The case is the latest round in his more than five-decade battle with the law.

The son of a King County farmer, he received his first conviction in the 1940s for having sexual relations with a 16-year-old girl and entered the topless nightclub business after making a name for himself in Seattle's pinball industry in the 1950s.

In 1971 Colacurcio was convicted of running a bingo racket and sentenced to three years. In the mid-1970s he served more than two years on a tax evasion conviction that was eventually overturned on appeal.

In 1981 he was convicted of tax fraud for skimming profits from a Bellevue club, and in 1991 he and Frank Jr. were convicted in a similar scheme involving clubs in Alaska.

Named as defendants are Colacurcio Sr., of Lake Forest Park; Colacurcio Jr., 47, of Seattle; Leroy Richard Christiansen, 67, of Seattle, a nephew of the elder Colacurcio, co-owner of key Colacurcio businesses and co-manager of day-to-day business with Colacurcio; David Carl Ebert, 61, of Monroe, another co-owner and manager; Steven Michael Fueston, 61, of Tacoma, manager of Fox's; Gilbert Conte, 75, of Bothell, manager of Sugar's and Honey's, and three Seattle corporations controlled by the Colacurcios.