These four people, none of whom had a criminal record, operated the Emperor%26#8217;s Club V.I.P., an escort service that functioned as a prostitution ring charging as much as $5,500 an hour, prosecutors say.Though new to the industry, the ring took in more than $1 million in barely three years, dispatching more than 50 prostitutes in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Paris and London to rendezvous, the federal authorities allege. In the process, the ring unwittingly did what Wall Street titans and political foes could not: bring down Mr. Spitzer. For all the weighty consequences of its operation, the Emperor%26#8217;s Club had a homespun quality. Its boss was Mark Brener, 62. He dealt with a stack of medical bills for his late wife by starting the escort service, an idea that dawned on him several years ago as he surveyed sex-related advertisements in the weekly newspaper The Village Voice, an associate of Mr. Brener%26#8217;s said.The venture reinvigorated Mr. Brener. He dyed his hair black, donned a leather jacket and recruited three women to help him. The four seemingly had little in common beyond a desire for extra money and a willingness to earn it in alternative ways. Cecil Suwal, now 23, a graduate of an elite New Jersey prep school, became operations manager for the service in 2004, the authorities say.Temeka Rachelle Lewis, 32, whom friends describe as a reserved and bookish graduate of the University of Virginia, scheduled meetings between willing young women and wealthy men, the authorities said. Assisting in that work, they say, was Tanya Hollander, 36. She joined the business hoping extra money would help support a new career as a holistic living counselor, her fianc%26#233; said.%26#8220;She is one of the sweetest, kindest people you%26#8217;ll ever meet,%26#8221; said the fianc%26#233;, Lance Cyrlin, a musician. Ms. Hollander and the other three accused members of the ring have pleaded not guilty to federal charges that include prostitution. These accounts of their lives are based on court records and on interviews with a variety of friends, associates, former neighbors and defense lawyers in the case. For decades, studies have tracked the forces that drive people into prostitution. Few, though, have reviewed what, beyond money, propels someone toward a life as a pimp or a madam.%26#8220;We don%26#8217;t know much about people who run brothels, massage parlors or escort agencies,%26#8221; said Ronald Weitzer, a sociology professor at George Washington University who has written about the sex industry. Certainly, Heidi Fleiss, known in the 1990s as the Hollywood Madam, and Sydney Biddle Barrows, the Mayflower Madam of the %26#8217;80s, came from stations of privilege that made their notoriety as procurers incongruous. In their cases, though, they had been socializing in circles in which money %26#151; and the lure of what it could bring %26#151; was ingrained in the fabric of life. In the case of the crew that prosecutors said ran the Emperor%26#8217;s Club, the outlines of their earlier lives seem more prosaic. Aric H. Bopp graduated with Ms. Lewis in 1993 from Harrisonburg High School in Virginia. %26#8220;Of all the people that I went to high school with,%26#8221; he said, %26#8220;she would be one of the absolute last people I would have ever thought would be involved in something like that.%26#8221;The BossMark Brener%26#8217;s former neighbors in South Brunswick, N.J., remember when he returned six years after his first wife%26#8217;s death to sell their condominium in 2003. The man they had known, a 5-foot-5 tax man with thinning gray hair and crooked teeth, had never fit anyone%26#8217;s image of a pimp.But when he pulled up in a sports car, Mr. Brener had transformed himself into an aging hipster, with sunglasses, a black comb-over and a young woman at his side. %26#8220;We didn%26#8217;t even know who he was,%26#8221; said one former neighbor, Theresa Smith. Born near the end of World War II, Mr. Brener had grown up in the area of the Polish-Russian border and, as a young man, moved to Israel, where he worked for the government tax agency, according to an associate. In the late 1980s, he, his wife and their teenage son immigrated to Queens. Mr. Brener was working as a tax consultant, and in 1995 the family moved into a two-story condominium in South Brunswick. Soon after, neighbors say, his wife, Eleonora, learned she had cancer. Mr. Brener%26#8217;s devotion to her was unmistakable, said neighbors, who watched the couple take slow walks in the evenings. As her prognosis became grim, Mr. Brener told neighbors he was taking her to Paris in search of alternative treatments, said Ms. Smith, who lived next door. 1 2 3 Next Page %26#x00bb;Reporting was contributed by William K. Rashbaum, Nate Schweber, Stacey Stowe and Ian Urbina.
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