Posted on 01/31/2006 3:55:05 PM PST by SmithL
The Galindo Avenue apartment got a lot of use. But nobody actually lived there.
A former-Fairfield couple who rented it pleaded no contest Monday to charges they ran a brothel there for a year -- directly across the street from the Concord police station. They used the Internet to employ prostitutes and market their service to customers.
Debra Watts, 52, pleaded no contest to three felony counts of pimping and pandering, and will serve one year of home detention, said prosecutor Jose Marin.
Her husband, Ernest Watts, 63, entered the same plea to one misdemeanor count of maintaining a house of prostitution.
Vacaville resident Michelle Secrist, 22, pleaded no contest to one misdemeanor count of prostitution.
As part of the terms of their probation, the couple cannot work in any kind of business that relates to prostitution. Before Monday's sentence, they had moved to Las Vegas.
"It's kind of ironic, for the crime they were charged with," said Debra Watts' attorney, Craig Pinto.
Concord police raided the brothel located a few hundred yards from their front door in January 2005. They first learned about it six months earlier, from a confidential informant offering information in exchange for leniency with a pending fraud case, Detective Thomas Parodi said in a search warrant affidavit.
As police began watching the apartment, they saw a Monday-through-Friday operation.
The women arrived about 9:30 or 10 a.m. and left by 7 p.m. Men entered and left throughout the day.
"The majority of the males usually stay inside the apartment for about 30 minutes," the affidavit says.
Another confidential informant who was under 18 and had worked for Watts for several years told police that the women charged $160 for every half-hour, the affidavit says. Debra Watts took half.
Though Watts claimed a small amount of income on tax returns under a business called A-1 Marketing, investigators traced more than $100,000 in bank accounts, Marin said.
Debra Watts was originally charged with soliciting a minor prostitute and pandering a minor under 16. All three defendants were originally charged with conspiracy.
"What's wrong, even if prosecutors were able to prove their case, with consenting adults going to a safe place for safe sex?" said Eric Saphire, Ernest Watts' attorney.
Deputy district attorney Dana Filkowski says the Internet has made it easier for young women to become prostitutes and for men to find them.
"The Internet means prostitution can occur anywhere and almost anyone can get into prostitution," Filkowski said. "You move out to the suburbs to get away from criminal activity, but it's literally right next door."
Your thread postings seem to have a common theme today.
The themes are worse when I get stuck with San Francisco stories.
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