Charged as Madam, and Defended as Entrepreneur and Pig Rescuer
ByANNE BARNARDand COLIN MOYNIHAN

According to Manhattan prosecutors, Anna Gristina is a well-connected madam who made millions of dollars running a brothel on the Upper East Side that catered to wealthy clients, where passers-by say fancy cars were seen idling past midnight. And when she was arrested last month, they said, she was with a Morgan Stanley banker whom she had just met about expanding her business.

But to one of Ms. Gristina’s lawyers, Peter J. Gleason, she is simply an entrepreneur who held business meetings about setting up a legitimate dating Web site that “would have rivaled Match.com.”

And to Susan Magidson, who worked with Ms. Gristina rescuing pet pigs from unsuitable homes, she is a demure, plain-living mother of four with a special empathy for the animals they helped match with adoptive families.

“We identify the pigs who need homes and we try to match-make,” Ms. Magidson said in a telephone interview from Bucks County, Pa., where the two women work with Ross Mill Farm and Piggy Camp.

The investigation, under way for five years, has been conducted by the Official Corruption Unit of the Manhattan district attorney’s office. It is unclear whether the inquiry has uncovered any criminal activity by police officers or public officials. Prosecutors have not named any suspected clients.

At a hearing on Tuesday, prosecutors told a judge in State Supreme Court in Manhattan that Ms. Gristina, 44, had connections to rich and powerful people who might help her flee in order to keep the case from proceeding.

Ms. Gristina, who pleaded not guilty on Feb. 23 to a single count of promoting prostitution, is being held on Rikers Island, unable to make bail set at $1 million cash or $2 million bond. The charge of promoting prostitution is a felony that carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.

The case, prosecutors say, stems from what they have described as hundreds of hours of surveillance by the corruption unit, which they said conducted multiple undercover operations and developed numerous informers. Prosecutors said the investigators had videotaped sexual encounters and had a witness to at least one encounter involving under-age prostitutes.

Ms. Gristina has a co-defendant, whose name was blacked out from the indictment, which could indicate that the person is cooperating with the authorities.

Before she was arrested, Ms. Gristina boasted that she had law enforcement contacts who would tip her off if she was in danger of getting caught, an assistant district attorney, Charles Linehan, said in court on Tuesday.

Now, wealthy friends and business associates may have “an interest in not allowing this case to go forward,” he told Judge Juan Merchan as he argued successfully against a request by Ms. Gristina’s lawyers to reduce her bail so that she could see her children in Monroe, N.Y., north of New York City.

Mr. Gleason, who is a former police officer, said in an interview that he did not know who the co-defendant was or who else was involved in the case. He said he was put in touch with Ms. Gristina by a mutual friend, Vincent Parco, a private investigator whom Ms. Gristina had consulted about how she could check the backgrounds of clients for her planned dating Web site.

Mr. Parco, who was also in court, said the site would be “sophisticated,” for people who “want to know who they’re meeting.”

Mr. Gleason called the prosecution “hypocrisy,” adding, “Eliot Spitzer gets a pass, and the females all go to jail.”

While the idea of a brothel on the Upper East Side might conjure images of luxurious gilt boudoirs, the building where the prostitution is said to have taken place, on East 78th Street, is more Yorkville tenement than mansion. The modest, narrow, brick walk-up just east of Second Avenue is near an Indian restaurant, a dry cleaner and the historic bakery Orwasher’s.

A resident of the building said she had wondered about the frequency of visitors, who often annoyed her by ringing her buzzer to get into the building. At least twice, she said, a man rang her bell and said he was a broker coming to show an apartment.

M. D. Azad, the owner of the Indian restaurant on the ground floor of the building, said he would see groups of up to six people, mainly women younger than 30, entering and leaving the building.

Camilo Ruan, 36, a salesman, said he lived a block away and walked by late at night to go to the gym. He often saw nicely dressed women going into the building, which he said was nothing unusual for the neighborhood. But what did seem “extremely strange,” he said, were the fancy cars frequently waiting in the street at 11 p.m. or midnight.

Ms. Magidson, who has placed six pigs with Ms. Gristina for foster care over the years, said Ms. Gristina was not “flashy or rich.”

“Pigs are one of Anna’s passions,” she said. “When people love pigs, in my opinion, they are special and unique — and in my opinion, the chosen ones — because they’re just such a special animal, highly intelligent, emotional animal, so it’s like working with orphans.”

But at Ms. Gristina’s arraignment on Feb. 23, according to a court transcript, prosecutors described her as brashly declaring that she had powerful allies “poised to help” if she ever needed to flee.

“She has business contacts worldwide,” Mr. Linehan said then, adding that Ms. Gristina “claimed to have made millions over the 15 or so years she has been in business as a madam.”

On Tuesday morning, Ms. Gristina entered the courtroom in handcuffs, wearing a black herringbone jacket. As she left, she looked over her shoulder as if looking for someone in particular.

紐約老鴇落網華爾街「恩客」心慌

紐約警方2月破獲一家高級妓院，逮捕花名「曼哈坦夫人」的老鴇安娜‧克瑞斯汀納（Anna Gristina），意外發現大型投資機構摩根士丹利的資深經理人沃克在場。部分華爾街人士擔心老鴇手上的恩客名冊曝光，人人自危。

克瑞斯汀納經營妓院已有15年，手下有50名妓女，嫖客包括有權勢的政客、執法人員、律師、銀行家、影藝高層、財星500大企業家及數位歐洲巨富。警方未必會公開名單，但華爾街菁英擔心克瑞斯汀納獲釋後爆料賣錢。一名摩根士丹利員工說：「每次發生這種事，你便會想知道誰的名字被公布……有可能是沒時間與正常女性交往的高層人士。」

44歲的克瑞斯汀納是蘇格蘭裔，平時在郊區的家中打扮樸素，育有4名子女，喜歡收養豬及狗，只有生意上門才進城。她曾安排「花花公子」模特兒與富豪性交易，頂級模特兒的價碼至少台幣7萬元。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/nyregion/woman-charged-as-madam-has-powerful-ties-prosecutor-tells-judge.html

2012-03-09．聯合報．A25．國際．編譯陳韻涵