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In another life,Roselyn Keo might have liked to work on Wall Street.
She ran with a tough crowd, had bad boyfriends, got into fights at school.
And just somewhere, they went wrong.
Still, she is occasionally prone to offering up indisputable truths.
American culture is a little fucked up, she mused.
This was back in the early aughts, when the industry was enjoying a cultural moment.
But the real money, she knew, was in Manhattan.
Which is where she met Samantha Foxx.
Samantha, born Samantha Barbash, was one of Hustlers top moneymakers.
Buried within this ultrafeminine package was a mercenary streak worthy of Gordon Gekko.
Which is why at Hustler, as elsewhere, the dancers worked in groups.
And everyone wanted to work with Samantha, Rosie recalled.
Because she had a lot of clients and she knew how to work well.
At this point, it was 2007.
It was like la-la land in there, Rosie recalled of Hustler.
We had a guy who was is at Guggenheim Partners.
He spent 300 grand in one week.
He came in three times, 100 grand every time he walked in the room.
Everyone made $10,000 every time he came in.
Thats nothing to them, Samantha told me in a separate conversation.
The men were mostly assholes.
Is that why you do this?, which was unnerving even when it wasnt true.
In the beginning, after work, Rosie would pick fights with her boyfriend, accusing him of cheating.
The girls develop a terrible contempt, one former Scores manager told me.
They stop believing men are real.
They think:They are there for me to manipulate and take money from.
And when it came to that, they all preferred the assholes.
Theres something extra-satisfying about persuading a man who thinks youre trash to spend his time and money on you.
Preferably so much that in the end,theyhatethemselves.Its like,Who doesnt have any self-respect now, motherfucker?
At least they were worthy opponents.
Not like the sad-sack losers who came in just to talk.
But their weakness was pathetic.
I had so many damsel-in-distress stories, Rosie said with a sigh.
Dont tell me youloveme.
That means I know I can milk you for everything, and then some.
It was just unbelievable how organized she was, he told me.
Her penmanship was perfect.
The dancers are the same way.
This was not a pattern Rosie intended to get stuck in.
Not like Samantha, whom shed come to view as a cautionary tale.
She would talk about the classes she took at F.I.T.
I felt in my heart, he said, that she liked me.
So he was surprised when, instead, Rosie disappeared.
He didnt hear from her until nearly two years later, when she called from Arizona.
Shed moved out there with a friend, and she wanted to come back.
Could he help her pay for a moving truck?
I could hear a baby crying in the background, Brian told me.
She was like, Its my friends, Im watching it.
Itoldhim I was in Arizona, Rosie said later.
In reality, she had never left New York.
Shed gotten pregnant with and engaged to her on-again-off-again boyfriend.
She had started by calling the names on what she called her Get Money list.
You gotta do what you gotta do, she said, sighing.
In the time shed been gone, things had drastically changed.
The dancers, too, were all new, she found when she got on the floor.
And they were good-looking.
I was like,I cant compete with this shit!
Then she saw a familiar face.
It didnt take her long to figure out what was going on.
Like I said, Im smart, she said.
I would see the guy laid out, chillin, and I would be like,Hmmm.
Since the recession, however, Samantha had found that the tables had turned.
The clubs needed customers, and she had the ability to bring them in.
Rosie wasnt the only one with a Get Money list.
At night, Samantha would go down the list of client phone numbers shed accrued over the years.
You know, like a telemarketer would do, she told me.
Often, she couldnt remember having met the guys, and sometimes the guys didnt remember her either.
Like Karina Pascucci, the sister of one of her dancer friends.
They also said that about Marsi Rosen, another beauty in Samanthas stable.
If the client Samantha reached out to expressed interest, shed have Marsi or Karina meet him out.
Then they would proceed to run up his credit card as far as they could push it.
Of course, it didnt always work.
Like a pinch of salt.
It sounds so bad to say that we were, like,druggingpeople, she said.
But it was, like, normal.
The guys they were targeting were wealthy, she pointed out.
Whats an extra $20,000 to them?
And they werent exactly upstanding citizens.
It wasnt like we pulled them off the street, she said.
Theyd been to Hustler, theyd been to Ricks, theyd been to Scores.
They all walked in ready to party.
And yeah, we slipped an extra one that they didnt know about.
But all of it goes hand in hand sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
You were sohappy,dont you remember?
You were tipping everyone.
Rosie had to hand it to Samantha: She was convincing.
Shes ruthless, she said with admiration.
Shebelongs on Wall Street.
Thats why this worked so well, said Rosie, fluttering her hand out the window.
They would just let it go.
Rosie, with her legendary organizational skills, streamlined the operation.
I treated it like a real business, she told me.
And she urged them to cultivate a higher level of clientele.
Rosie preferred upscale places, the kind frequented by rich guys with everything to lose.
Sometimes, shed tell them she worked at Guggenheim Partners.
A few drinks in, shed make her proposition: I know!
Lets go to a strip club!
The nights fell into a pattern.
At some point, the guys would want sex.
I have my dignity, Samantha told me.
So they decided to outsource to prostitutes they found from Backpage and Craigslist.
Rosie eased into her role as a modern-day Heidi Fleiss with enthusiasm.
If the girls were a little scruffy, shed take them shopping for new clothes and makeup.
She trained them in etiquette and laid down the law: no drinking, no drugs.
Then, while they took care of their business, she took care of hers.
I did it right in front of them, she said.
I would ask them really quickly, Whats your mothers maiden name?
Whats your Social Security number?
At the end of the night, she calculated the breakdown.
I could do all the math in my head.
Its unclear how much the clubs profited (Scores declined to comment on any aspect of this story).
Nobody put us up to anything!
she snapped at me when I suggested it.
We are strong women who dont fucking take shit from nobody.
Rosie believed the hosts and managers appreciated her work.
There were nights and weeks where I brought in the club 100 grand.
Without me making the effort to go out and market and promote, they wouldnt have business.
She was no longer just a disposable dancer; she was the CFO of her own corporation.
It was like I moved up on the totem pole, she said.
With Rosies business savvy and Samanthas people skills, business boomed.
That first Christmas, they bought their favorite prostitute her first pair of Louboutins.
We were like Kobe and Shaq, said Rosie.
Thats what I always said to Samantha.
How muchare we going to make tonight?
This was a new innovation.
I saw there was a market for in-between, Rosie told me.
You bring the strippers to the guy.
It was good, and we had a monopoly on it for a while.
The gang was doing well, as evidenced by the several luxury vehicles Rosie had in rotation.
That was like a night for me, she said.
Or like an hour.
Still, something about seeing Samantha shopping in the car had irritated Rosie.
In retrospect, Rosie recognizes this was the moment when she felt things were getting out of control.
Running a team of hookers, strippers, and thieves was complicated.
The prostitutes were unreliable.
And her attempts at being a den mother had been met with indifference.
You haveopportunities, shed told one girl in frustration.
You just dont take advantage of them.
The other girls werent much help.
Samantha would get upset and start looking for other resources, for other girls, Rosie said.
Samantha had a soft spot for ex-strippers with problems not the kind of girls Rosie trusted.
People that have morals and principles.
she would argue with Samantha.
Samantha had zero business sense, was the problem.
Look what happened with Rick, a banker theyd met.
He was good-looking, had money, was nice, and not a pervert, Rosie said.
But after Samantha found out Rick had a credit limit of $50,000, that was that.
Rick was predictably furious and never returned a text again.
Thats the problem with these girls, Rosie told me of her cohort, shaking her head.
I see the forest.
They just wanted a $50,000 tree.
One hedge-fund manager had gotten so wasted hed bumped his head in his pool and suffered a concussion.
One of the girls had ended a night covered with bite marks.
Thats why I think we got greedy, Rosie said.
Because of the amount of stress we had to endure.
Just for being annoying.We needed to make it worth it.
I would say to myself,Okay, Im going to make 100 grand and leave, she said.
Then Id make 100 grand.
Then,Im going to make another hundred grand.
Im going to get to half a million and leave.
No, now I want to make a million and leave.It was just never enough.
So they kept going, becoming increasingly reckless and increasingly cruel.
Rosie got him a drink from the bar.
She talked to him about her daughter.
We had like regular human conversations.
I couldnt tell you about what the place looked like or anything, Fred told me.
The room was … square?
There was a … table?
He does have a vague memory of overhearing the girls talking about a friend whod been gang-raped.
It was horrible, he recalled.
But I was so messed up, I couldnt even make an angry face.
We cleaned him out completely, said Rosie.
He pleaded, Can you guys c’mon credit back my debit card?
My mortgage payment is on there.
But Samanthas like, You cant feel bad!
If we dont do it, someone else is going to do it!
I can tell you exactly how much it was, she said.
Five thousand on his Chase debit card, and then he had an airlines card.
But to him it was a lot.
So when this particular caller said he had evidence, they were skeptical.
It was very weird, said one of the cops later.
But they had the tape.
And soon they picked up the girl on the tape, who confessed immediately.
I told her she was being paranoid, Samantha told me.
She said I was going crazy, Rosie said.
Right there and then, she should have said, Rosie has instincts.
If she had just listened to me, the investigation would have gone cold.
Men dont want to admit to being victimized by women.
If he was drugged the first time, I guess he liked it, a Scores spokesman quipped.
The doctor became a laughingstock, but the cops recognized the M.O.
But the dates were so tight together he didnt know about the charges until it was over.
It was sad he actually thought he was dating the girl.
Younan told the cops hed met Karina Pascucci at a restaurant on Park Avenue.
She said she was a nursing student and introduced him to her relatives, Samantha and Marsi.
After the story broke, one of the cops whod interviewed him ran into a colleague.
That guys full of shit, the guy said.
No, protested the cop.
Young men themselves, the cop and his colleagues were getting kind of spooked.
Im paranoid, one told me.
I know this job.
You come here, you say this happened to me.
Whos going to believe me?
She was like, Good, now hell pay his bill.
But Rosie had a bad feeling about it.
Like she said, shes perceptive.
On June 9, 2014, the cops cornered Samantha at an ATM in her neighborhood.
They were like, Get in the car!
The neighbors were staring.
Im having like a panic attack.
Karina was picked up next, then Marsi.
In the car on the way to central booking, she and the cop bantered.
He was basically like, How did you get wrapped up in this?
Youre smart, youre pretty.
In the rearview mirror, his face changed.
I aint never taking a drink from you, he said tersely.
Dont worry, hon, she said.
You dont have no money for me to take.
One was Fred, the father with the autistic son.
As it turned out, one of the credit cards theyd maxed out was corporate.
His company had launched an internal investigation, and Fred had been fired.
I wake up in the morning thinking about it, Fred told me.
Every day, once or twice a day, I feel the barrel of the gun against my head.
The women were unmoved.
As they saw it,theyshould be considered the aggrieved parties.
(Younans lawyers deny this.)
Hes a scumbag like the rest of them, Samantha told me.
These guys are all over these girls, she said of her clientele.
They get fucked up, they know what the hell theyre doing.
And yettheywere looking at three years in jail?
What about the things the guys did?
What about Bill Cosby?
Noneof us are strippers, Samantha insisted.
This was a distinction lost on the men who arrested them.
Like, I dont do that.
The other guy laughed.
You think that drugging people without their consent is okay, but a prostitute is derogatory?
Afterward, they were trucked out to Rikers, where they were reunited in a cell the following day.
Samantha attempted to rally the troops.
Samantha was like, Lets all hold hands and fight this together!
Its us against them.
We didnt do anything!
Im thinking in my head,This is dumb, she told me.
I said, Yeah, were innocent.
Were all fuckin angels.
Like, come on!
Everything has already unraveled!
Put your big-girl panties on.
Just be truthful for one thing in life.
Rosie basically had a breakdown, Samantha said.
The correction officers eyed them with amusement.
Samantha pointed to me, Rosie said.
I pointed to her.
Samantha, teetering on the steps in Gucci heels, paled visibly beneath her tan.
That afternoon, I drove to Nanuet to see Rosie.
She opened the door looking wary.
Samantha had already texted.We heard you took a deal.
At first I was like, No.
She wasnt worried about her former colleagues, especially Samantha.
Shell have a crew in jail, she cracked.
I was watchingOrange Is the New Black.Shell be like Red.
Shell be like V.
Over the next year, I talked to Rosie many times.
At first they were proper interviews, but then shed call at random and we would just talk.
Shed want to complain about Samantha and how shed fucked up my aspirations.
Or shed return to her goals for the future and her struggles with anger and depression.
I know why we did it, she told me at one point.
Hurt people hurt people.
Despite her obvious flaws, it was easy to understand why clients found her charming.
She was funny and strange and oddly philosophical, especially on the subjects of greed and materialism.
Because thewant of wantingis whats killing me.
In February, we met for lunch before her appearance in criminal court.
Idiot, muttered a guy in the front row.
It turned out to be Rosies lawyer, who had not been returning my calls.
But she hadnt seemed at all concerned.
I mean, its white-collar crime, shed said at one point.
Do you like foie gras?
I love foie gras.
A few weeks later, Samantha Barbash pleaded to the same charges.
Their sentencings are scheduled for early in the New Year.
In the meantime, Karina has a new retail job; Samantha is still working on her swimsuit line.
Rosies court date is scheduled for February.
If you want to write thefictionalstory I told you, you could.
Then she said something we both knew was true: I am saving myself, she said.
I am out for myself.
Still, I like her.
Weve stayed in touch.
Not long ago, when we spoke, she said she was living in California.
She and her fiance were on the rocks again, but shed been making new friends, she said.
Theyre all like, Ill take you on my private jet.
Well go to Tampa, well go to Vegas.
She hadnt said yes to anyone, but she was thinking about it.
I mean, I have all their numbers.
