It
was a sweeping and complex criminal enterprise: brothels in Brooklyn,
where enough 15-minute sexual encounters added up to more than $2
million in profits in one 13-month period, and nail salons in Queens,
where managers, runners and agents placed bets on legal lotteries in an
old-school numbers racket.

And the mastermind was a retired New York City police detective who recruited at least seven police officers acting as foot soldiers, according to court documents charging the group on Thursday.

The
accusations amount to one of the largest scandals to hit the New York
Police Department in recent years, a throwback to corruption dating back
to the 1950s, when a Brooklyn bookmaker enlisted officers as muscle for
his $20-million-a-year operation.

In
the new indictment, two brothers who are officers in the Police
Department were even charged with holding a bachelor party in a brothel.

The
man accused of being the group’s ringleader, Ludwig Paz, 51, used his
knowledge of the workings of the Police Department as a former vice
detective to his advantage, prosecutors charged.

He
knew that undercover officers investigating prostitution are not
allowed to expose their genitals during their interactions with
suspects, and so he made a rule for new clients: “undress and allow
themselves to be fondled to pass the brothel’s security screening,” the
Queens district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the officers and
dozens of civilians, said.

People give stories all the time about being trafficked or sexually assaulted or worse by police officers and they wind up as conspiracy theories associated with Qanon threads as opposed to it being the natural byproduct of heavy policing in areas of people that can’t fight back

Brothels. Numbers Rackets. Criminal Ring Was Run by Corrupt N.Y. Officers, Prosecutors Say.