By Eric Frazier and Victoria Cherrie, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.
Nov. 17–Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Sgt. Craig Conger sits at a computer screen, clicking through pictures of naked women.
He’s doing his job, overseeing detectives who keep tabs on the kind of high-priced prostitutes who ply their trade on the Internet rather than the street corner.
The recent bust of a suspected call-girl service in Charlotte has offered a glimpse into the secretive world of high-end prostitution. Conger and others say it’s a relatively small but growing part of the city’s prostitution trade.
“It’s just taking off like any other business enterprise (in Charlotte),” said Conger, a former vice officer who works with the FBI’s Criminal Enterprise Task Force. “They’ll use technology. They’ll get the word out any way they can.”
Federal authorities have arrested Sallie Saxon in connection with what they say was a $3 million prostitution ring with operations powered by several Web sites.
Saxon, who faces a 17-count federal indictment filed Thursday, is accused of being the mastermind behind www.hushhush.com and other sites offering “expensive escorts, models and companions” to men who could afford a $1,800 membership fee.
Saxon is being held without bond. Her husband, Donald Saxon, and a Taylorsville photographer, Glenn Fox, have also been indicted.
The Observer called several women listed on the Internet as escorts who work in Charlotte. Several hung up. But one told the newspaper she is putting herself through college with the $175 per half-hour she charges.
She said she lives in Greensboro but travels often to the Charlotte area and other cities such as Las Vegas, Chicago and New York.
She visits Charlotte most weekends when she isn’t working in other cities, especially if big events or conferences are in town.
In her circles, she said, Charlotte is considered small-town.
“It’s not bad,” she said of Charlotte, “but (it) doesn’t compare to business in other cities like Las Vegas.”
But, she said, business is growing here.
Easy to find online
Statistics on high-end escort firms are hard to come by. Prostitution arrests in Charlotte have remained relatively flat in recent years, with police making about 200 to 300 arrests a year. Charlotte-Mecklenburg police statistics don’t differentiate between high-end call girls and street corner hookers.Still, police say finding examples of high-end prostitution is as simple as logging onto the Internet. Despite the secretive nature of the work, escort services openly advertise on the Web, right down to phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
The sites advertise services from $150 an hour, but fees can also run as high as $1,000 an hour, Conger said. Authorities say Sallie Saxon charged clients up to $700 an hour, and generally let her prostitutes keep 70 percent. One client paid $10,000 for a March 2007 trip from Charlotte to Chicago with a prostitute, according to the indictment.
The hushhush.com Web site, which claims to offer “the finest in Southern hospitality,” displays photos of women and their biographies. It lists their hometowns, zodiac signs and preferred activities ranging from watching NFL games to enjoying “a blazing sunset at dusk.”
Requirements for working for HushHush are listed in online advertisements, including one recruiting women in Tennessee. The advertisements say a college education is preferred, and that applicants must have a good smile and be familiar with current events.
A cat-and-mouse game
Since prostitution charges are generally misdemeanors, those who use the escort sites as fronts for prostitution don’t mind playing cat-and-mouse with police.
Police know the sites, and the escorts know police are monitoring them. Many of the sites say they offer men companionship, not sex.
The Greensboro woman who spoke with the Observer said that even though she gets paid for her companionship, people have the wrong idea if they think she’s a prostitute.
“Sometimes we just meet people who want someone to talk to, someone to tell their problems to,” she said. “We have a friendship relationship with a lot of them.”
The police don’t buy that.
“An escort is a prostitute,” said an undercover Charlotte-Mecklenburg vice officer, who would not disclose his name. “There’s no such thing as an escort who just goes out to dinner with you.”
The police sometimes call the escorts to let them know they’re being tracked, or to set up sting operations in which investigators pretend to be “johns.”
Some services try to get the kind of detailed background information on potential clients that might help weed out undercover cops. Authorities say Sallie Saxon, for instance, made clients provide detailed employment information with documentation.
Conger said he couldn’t comment on the Saxon case, but noted that escort services generally use the Web sites to connect with customers; meetings are arranged at hotels or restaurants, or even the escort’s home.
The “johns” appreciate that it’s discreet. They don’t have to meet women on the street, and they like that the women are supposedly higher-class and prettier.
“Sometimes they are,” Conger said. “Sometimes they aren’t.”
From escorts to addicts
The McLeod Center, a substance abuse treatment center in south Charlotte, offers a program that tries to get prostitutes out of the trade. Most of the 250 prostitutes who’ve come through the program in the past eight years have been street prostitutes, but several recently have been high-end call girls.Some start as strippers in clubs, then get pulled into high-end call girl work, said Genny Kleiser, operations director for McLeod. It’s easy to fall down the ladder to street prostitution, she added, especially if a woman gets addicted to drugs. The call-girl services drop them.
On a discussion board for one Web site, escorts in North Carolina were exchanging despairing messages about the Saxon case. Some said Sallie Saxon ran a first-class operation, but others were less complimentary.
Many expressed concern about how police managed to infiltrate the operation, using an escort as a confidential informant. A poster identified only as “legal,” and who seemed to be a police officer, suggested the investigation could net more arrests, or yield more informants.
“Maybe none of you are safe,” the writer noted, “but maybe some of you are.”
Discreet and elite
HushHush pledges to discreetly provide “expensive escorts, models and companions” to clients who pay $1,800 members fee.
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