Thirty people were arrested on Wednesday in connection with High Class NY, a Sheepshead Bay-based “high-end escort service” that allegedly earned more $7 million over three years. The service offered sex and drugs to clients who paid up to $10,000 per night. Rates for the hookers ranged from $400 to $3,600 per hour, and customers would use code phrases to order drugs with their sex, such as the tricky “I’d like a bottle of Champagne” for cocaine. Charges against High Class NY’s owner Mikhail Yampolsky, his wife, Bronislava, and their two sons include but are not limited to enterprise corruption, promoting prostitution, money laundering, and criminal sale of a controlled substance. After the Yampolsky’s arraignment in a Brooklyn court, a lawyer for the family said her clients were unaware that anything unsavory was going on here:
“The girls are very beautiful, men come to New York, and they need some companionship,” said Albert Y. Dayan, the lawyer, arguing that the Yampolskys were running a legitimate escort service.
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hyne said the hookers were mainly catering to “the financial markets, hedge fund people, and people with nothing but money.” And, for the record, Hynes is horrified:
Asked what a guy got for his 170k [over the course of a year], Hynes quipped, “God knows. I’m a married man. I don’t want to think about it.”
Well just thinking about it is still legal, you know.
Arrests in ‘High Class’ Prostitute Ring [WSJ]
Brooklyn-based prostitution ring, ‘High Class NY’ busted, 17 arrested: police [NYDN]
Brooklyn prostitution ring busted [NYP]
