Early life and education
Jason Lubell Itzler was born as Jason Lubell Sylk [5] and is the only son of Ronnie Lubell and Leonard Allen Sylk. [5] Following his parents’ divorce, Itzler moved to New York with his mother. [5] While growing up, Jason was influenced by his grandfather, Nathan Lubell, who was a founding partner in the Riviera in Las Vegas. Jason's mother remarried Ron Itzler, [5] a lawyer in the firm of Fischbein, Badillo, Wagner, and Itzler, and so the family moved to the suburbs in New Jersey. Jason attended a number of private schools, including the Elisabeth Morrow School, the Dwight-Englewood School, and the Hotchkiss 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. [5] Jason graduated from The George Washington University with a degree 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. Itzler never took the Bar exam.
Business ventures, prostitution ring, and criminal record
While in law school, he started a phone sex operation called M2 Communications, Inc., where he would charge $4.98-a-minute, soon becoming a young millionaire. The company averaged $1,500,000 a month. [5] Due to his mother's untimely death from cancer in 1994, he abandoned his business and was eventually forced to declare bankruptcy in 1997. [5] His next company was called SoHo Models, one of the first companies to supply webcam pornography, which he ran out of a rented 8,000-square-foot loft on the corner of Canal and Broadway in New York City.
In 2001, Itzler was arrested at Newark Liberty International Airport for trying to smuggle ecstasy into the United States. [6] 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. [6] [5] 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. [6]
New York Confidential was run out of Itzler's Art Deco apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey. [5] The company was doing well and the office was moved to a 5000 sq ft. loft at 79 Worth Street in Manhattan. [5] In 2004, Itzler was averaging a gross of $55,000 a night. [5] "That's because we were the best... 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." [5] 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. [5] When asked about the repercussions faced as a result of his ventures within New York Confidential, Jason stated, "The problem with NY Confidential was it didn’t go far enough". There were even talks of franchising Confidentials in other cities, such as Las Vegas. [5]
In 2005, authorities arrested Itzler, who pleaded guilty to money laundering and promoting prostitution in 2006, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. [6] [7]
In March 2005, Itzler was transferred from The Tombs to Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital. In an interview while in the psychiatric ward, Itzler said, "If I’m found innocent, I plan to go back into business opening up escort agencies all over the country. But I’ll base it in Costa Rica – to play it a little safe." [8]
In 2007, a transsexual Rikers Island inmate known as “Angelina Jolie” sent him to the hospital. Itzler stated, "She walked up to me and said, ‘If you don’t shut your mouth, I’m going to break your face.’ Even though she has a penis, she looks like a woman. I’ve never hit a woman in my life." Itzler was taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, where he said a CAT scan found “severe brain trauma.” [9]
In 2010 Itzler shared an apartment in Flamingo Towers in Miami, Florida with Hungarian photographer Zoltan Present (then Prepszent). Itzler had previously faced several charges in Florida including stalking, burglary, and aggravated assault with a weapon. This apartment was subject to controversy when former University of Wisconsin-La Crosse student, Julia Sumnicht died in Miami in March of 2010. As a result of an interview with Itzler while he was in a Manhattan jail where he faced other unrelated charges, Itzler claimed to have also taken GHB himself the night that Sumnicht had visited their apartment. Additionally, Sumnicht's body was only discovered after she had visited the apartment of a different photographer later that night. [10] After a detective identified himself in a call related to the investigation of Sumnicht's death, Itzler immediately hung up, a police report for the incident said. [4]
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. [11]
