Dan Gross: Local escort-service operator 'not surprised' by Spitzer scandal
TONY CHIU isn't surprised about New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's alleged involvement with an upscale escort agency.
Chiu, who runs Tony's Finest Escorts, says he's "heard so many stories that nothing seems to shock me anymore."
Chiu, 24, of South Philadelphia, says past clients of his agency include a "district attorney in a local state" and a "former mayor of a New Jersey town." Chiu employs just over a dozen women in Philadelphia and says he has another dozen on call in the Baltimore, Washington and North Jersey areas, and a former Playboy playmate working for him in Las Vegas.
Chiu is quick to say that his company provides companionship, not sex. The Mount Laurel native has a stable of attorneys, and as he explains it, "The law clearly defines any sexual favor for money as against the law."
But, he says, his clients, who must be referred by other clients, may pay $5,000 to arrange a dinner date with one of "my girls," as he calls them. "Anything that happens after that, as long as it wasn't pre-arranged, that would not be breaking the law. I don't see any difference between my service and eHarmony or Match.com. Clearly those Web sites are making money off of introducing people. They're not being prosecuted," Chiu said. A recruitment ad on his company's Web site says that women can make anywhere from $500 to $2,500 per hour, or from $5,000 to $25,000 per day. Chiu says his largest booking was a woman he had sent to Las Vegas with a client who pulled in $16,000 to $20,000 in one weekend.
Chiu's commission is never more than 30 percent, he explains, and while he doesn't take bookings from clients every day, he says there have certainly been days in which "I've made $1,000 just for making a phone call."
Chiu, who usually carries color photos of his available escorts in the jacket pockets of the pinstripe suits he's fond of wearing, graduated into running his escort agency after a stint as an amateur pornographer, for which he garnered a Philadelphia Weekly cover story. "Ninety-five 95 percent of the girls that work for me have steady full-time respectable careers," including, he says, "an Applebee's hostess, a licensed doctor, models, dancers, and I've probably hired six schoolteachers, mostly pre-school teachers." *
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