92 year old Seattle Strip Club Mogul Frank Colacurcio Sr Faces new RICO Charges, He Ran Seattle’s 2003 “Strippergate” Campaign Finance Scandal and The Italian “Don” Paid His Own Dancers $1,000 for Sex.

92 year old Seattle Strip Club Mogul Frank Colacurcio Sr Faces new RICO Charges, He Ran Seattle’s 2003 “Strippergate” Campaign Finance Scandal and The Italian “Don” Paid His Own Dancers $1,000 for Sex.

  

SEATTLE — Longtime strip-club owner Frank Colacurcio Sr., his son and four associates were indicted Tuesday on federal racketeering, money laundering, mail fraud and prostitution conspiracy charges, the latest in a long line of brushes with the law for the notorious Seattle crime figure.

 

In a grand jury indictment unsealed Tuesday, the 92-year-old Colacurcio and his associates are accused of promoting prostitution at four Seattle-area nightclubs run by the Colacurcios’ management business.

 

Dancers and club managers were dissuaded from reporting prostitution, and those who were arrested or caught in acts of prostitution were repeatedly allowed to return to work in the clubs, and receipts from the sex trade were laundered through various bank accounts, according to the indictment.

 

Colacurcio has a rap sheet that dates back to the 1940s and he was identified as a racketeer in hearings before a U.S. Senate organized crime committee in 1957.

 

Last year, the Colacurcios pleaded guilty to felony criminal charges in Seattle’s 2003 “Strippergate” campaign-finance scandal in which they secretly funneled thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions through friends, relatives and business partners to the re-election campaigns of three Seattle City Council members. The scheme occurred shortly before a vote on a key rezoning issue involving a strip club.

  

The RICO charges include racketeering conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to use interstate facilities for prostitution and 12 counts of mail fraud, including the mailing of reports that — according to the government — were designed to evade admission and income taxes by understating the number of people who paid cover charges at the clubs.  

The four clubs and the Colacurcios’ homes and offices were raided by FBI agents on June 2, 2008. At the time, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit, Colacurcio Sr., 92, continued to pay his own dancers as much as $1,000 for sex.  More…………………..

Investigators have long suspected that Frank Colacurcio Sr. was behind the execution-style slayings of five people who had crossed him one way or another. The victims: a rival strip-club operator and his fiancée, a bar owner in Central Washington, a mechanic in a murder-for-hire scheme, and a police informant.

The slayings, which took place in the 1970s and 1980s, have drawn little attention for more than 20 years. Now, federal and local investigators have reopened the cases, trying to find out once and for all whether Colacurcio had anything to do with the deaths. Most recently, investigators reopened the slain-informant case, which might offer them their best hope.

 

bill Warner

private investigator