 | This article contains content that is written like an advertisement .(February 2019) |
Jason Lubell Itzler, born in February 23, 1967, [1] is an American entrepreneur, attorney, and the founder of the escort agency New York Confidential. He was repeatedly imprisoned for money laundering, drug charges and prostitution.
Jason Lubell Itzler was born Jason Lubell Sylk [2] the only son of Ronnie Lubell and Leonard Allen Sylk. [2] Following his parents’ divorce, Itzler moved to New York with his mother. [2] Jason was influenced growing up by his grandfather, Nathan Lubell, who was a founding partner in the Riviera in Las Vegas. He also owned an amusement park in Coney Island for his four young daughters to enjoy. [2] Jason's mother eventually remarried Ron Itzler, [2] a then prominent lawyer in the firm of Fischbein, Badillo, Wagner, and Itzler, and so the family moved to the suburbs in New Jersey. Growing up, Jason attended a number of private schools, including the Elisabeth Morrow School, the Dwight-Englewood School, the Hotchkiss School, and Tenafly High School. Jason spent many of his evenings at the New York Friars Club, and summers in the Catskills, where he worked as a cabana boy at the Concord Hotel. [2] Jason graduated from The George Washington University with degrees in political science and art history.
Itzler enrolled in the Shepard Broad College of Law in the late 1980s and graduated with a J.D. in 1993.
While in law school, he started a phone sex operation called M2 Communications, Inc., where he would charge $4.98-a-minute, and soon become a young millionaire. The company averaged $1,500,000 a month. [2] Due to his mother's untimely death from cancer in 1994, he abandoned his business and was eventually forced to declare bankruptcy in 1997. [2] His next company was called SoHo Models. Itzler rented an 8,000-square-foot loft on the corner of Canal and Broadway in New York City to be one of the first companies to supply Webcam porn.
In 2001, Itzler was arrested at Newark Liberty International Airport for trying to smuggle ecstasy into the United States. [3] After serving seven months in jail for the drug charge, he was released on parole in 2003, after which he started an escort service named New York Confidential. [3] [2] To meet the condition of his parole that he maintain legitimate employment, Itzler was fraudulently listed as a paralegal in the office of his attorney, Paul Bergrin. [3]
New York Confidential was run out of Itzler's Art Deco apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey. [2] The company was doing well and the office was moved to a 5000 sq ft. loft at 79 Worth Street in Manhattan. [2] In 2004 Itzler was averaging a gross of $55,000 a night. [2] "That's because we were the best," said Itzler. "At NY Confidential, I told my girls that the pressure is on them because we have to provide the clients with the greatest single experience ever, a Kodak moment to treasure for the rest of their lives. Spreading happiness, positive energy, and love,that's what being the best means to me. Call me a dreamer, but that's the NY Confidential credo." [2] It was this attention to detail and customer satisfaction that made the group successful, attracting a wide array of clients, including senators and famous athletes. [2] There were even talks of franchising Confidentials in other cities, such as Las Vegas. [2]
In 2005, authorities arrested Itzler, who pleaded guilty to money laundering and promoting prostitution in 2006, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. [3] [4] [5] [6]
On May 14, 2012, Itzler was sentenced to four years in prison for prostitution, money laundering, and drug charges after an investigation the previous summer found evidence that he had sold cocaine and provided a prostitute to a Manhattan customer. [7]
Itzler is Jewish and has been engaged seven times. [2] He has dated his own girls, including the number one escort Natalie McLennan, known as Natalia. [2] Natalia made as much as $2,000 per hour with a two-hour minimum working as an escort at New York Confidential. [2] Asked if the work affected her relationship with Itzler, Natalia says he would sometimes get jealous of the time she spent away from him, but not of the men. [2] It would only bother him if she slept with another man for free. [2] In 2010, Natalia pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted money laundering in connection to New York Confidential. [8] Itzler has had Hanuman and "Super Lucky" tattooed on his arms since the early 1990s. [9]
Itzler has been featured on The View, [10] He appeared several times on The Opie & Anthony show, including phoning in from prison. He also appeared as a guest twice on The Howard Stern Show .
Gerald Phillip Garson was an American lawyer and New York Supreme Court Justice who heard matrimonial divorce and child custody cases in Brooklyn. He was convicted in 2007 of accepting bribes to manipulate the outcomes of divorce proceedings. Garson was imprisoned from June 2007 until December 2009.
Gerald "Jerry" Lawrence Shargel was an American defense attorney who was based in New York City and generally considered one of the best criminal defense lawyers in the country.
Efrain Gonzalez Jr. is an American politician and convicted felon who served as a member of the New York State Senate from 1990 to 2008.
Liborio Salvatore “Barney” Bellomo is an American mobster and boss of the Genovese crime family of New York City. Bellomo was a member of the 116th Street Crew of Saverio "Sammy Black" Santora.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey, dubbed the D. C. Madam by the news media, operated Pamela Martin and Associates, an escort agency in Washington, D. C. Although she maintained that the company's services were legal, she was convicted on April 15, 2008, of racketeering, using the mail for illegal purposes, and money laundering. Slightly over two weeks later, facing a prison sentence of five or six years, she was found hanged. Autopsy results and the final police investigative report concluded that her death was a suicide.
Ashley Rae Maika DiPietro, better known by the stage name Ashley Alexandra Dupré, is a former call girl. She gained fame in 2008 for her role as "Kristen" in the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal, which led to the resignation of Eliot Spitzer as governor of New York.
The Israeli mafia are the organized crime groups operating in Israel or consisting of Israeli members. There are 16 crime families operating in Israel, five major groups active on the national level and 11 smaller organizations. There are six Jewish crime families active and three Arab crime families. Many heads and members of the crime groups have either been killed or are in prison.
Marc Stuart Dreier is an American former lawyer who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2009 for committing investment fraud using a Ponzi scheme. He is scheduled to be released from FCI Sandstone on June 30, 2025. On May 11, 2009, he pleaded guilty in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York to eight charges of fraud, which included one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud, one count of money laundering, one count of securities fraud, and five counts of wire fraud in a scheme to sell more than $950 million in fictitious promissory notes. Civil charges, filed in December 2008 by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, are pending. The 2011 documentary Unraveled states that "Drier stole over $740 million from 4 clients, 4 individuals, and 13 hedge funds".
Paul Bergrin is an American convicted felon and former criminal defense lawyer who practiced law in Newark, New Jersey. Prior to his conviction, he was known for defending a range of famous and notorious clients. He was convicted of conspiracy to murder a witness and other racketeering, cocaine and prostitution offenses, and sentenced to six concurrent life terms in federal prison in 2013. He was disbarred by the Supreme Court of New Jersey in 2016. A veteran lawyer from the area said that the crimes alleged in the federal indictment would make Bergrin "the craziest, most evil lawyer in the history of New Jersey," and "that is saying something", and a federal court has likened Bergrin's downfall to the plot of a drama by Sophocles or Martin Scorsese.
Chris Paciello is an American former Cosa Nostra associate, member of The Untouchables car-theft ring, and government informant who was convicted of racketeering. During the 1990s, and again in 2012, he became a prominent night club owner in the South Beach section of Miami Beach, Florida.
John George Koeltl is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan.
Preetinder Singh Bharara is an Indian-born American lawyer and former federal prosecutor who served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. He is currently a partner at the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. He served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for five years prior to leading the Southern District of New York.
Rentboy.com was a commercial social networking site that connected male sex workers and masseurs with potential clients. Rentboy.com was also the major organizer of the International Escort Awards and a traveling cabaret called "Hustlaball."
Backpage.com was a classified advertising website founded in 2004 by the alternative newspaper chain New Times Inc./New Times Media as a rival to Craigslist.
North Preston's Finest, also known as NPF, the Scotians, or the North Preston gang, is a gang of pimps based in North Preston, a satellite of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Natasha Falle is a Canadian professor at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, who was forcibly prostituted from the ages of 15 to 27 and now opposes prostitution in Canada. Falle grew up in a middle-class home and, when her parents divorced, her new single-parent home became unsafe, and Falle ran away from home. At the age of 15, Falle became involved in the sex industry in Calgary, Alberta.
Mohamed Shafee bin Mohamed Abdullah is a Malaysian lawyer.
Declan Brady, also known as Mr Nobody, is an Irish criminal with convictions for possession of firearms and money laundering. He is a senior figure in the Kinahan Organised Crime Group founded by Christy Kinahan.
Alvin Leonard Bragg Jr. is an American politician and lawyer who serves as the New York County District Attorney, covering Manhattan. In 2021, he became the first African American elected to that office. Bragg had previously served as Chief Deputy Attorney General of New York and as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York. In 2024, he became the first and only district attorney to secure a conviction of a former United States president.
Juan Manuel Merchan is a Colombian-born American judge and former prosecutor. He is an acting justice of the New York State Supreme Court in New York County (Manhattan). He presided over the 2024 criminal trial of former US president Donald Trump, in which Trump was convicted. Merchan is the first judge in history to preside over the criminal indictment and conviction of a US President, and the first judge to hold a President in criminal contempt of court.