STRIPPERS, DRUGS … GOVERNMENT’S WAR AGAINST BOTH CONTINUES
|| By FITSNEWS || News out of Myrtle Beach, S.C. reveals a major, multi-state bust initiated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). According to local news reports, seven people – including strip club owner Michael Rose – were arrested and charged with money laundering, drug trafficking and racketeering.
According to the government, Rose and his alleged accomplices – including Vladimir Handl of Florence, S.C., Peter Scalise of Myrtle Beach and former Myrtle Beach police officer David Gaither – took more than $2.3 million they believed was from a bankruptcy settlement (or drug proceeds) and laundered it through Rose’s strip club.
Handl and another defendant are also charged with conspiring to possess cocaine with the intent to distribute.
If convicted of all the charges filed against them, Rose, Handl and Scalise could each face more than 2,000 years behind bars.
Sheesh …
Obviously we aren’t familiar with any of these gentlemen – or the particulars of their business enterprises – but last time we checked South Carolina’s Grand Strand was a popular tourism destination. One frequented by men looking to spend their money on golf, food and … yeah, a little bit of fun on the side.
Should accommodating their vices be illegal? No … as this website has consistently and adamantly maintained.
We don’t partake in any of the above ourselves, but we support the legalization of gambling, prostitution and recreational drug use as a matter of principle: Arguing government has no business to impose its morality on anyone else (so long as their pursuit of these vices doesn’t impose on another’s liberty).
And while we’ll withhold judgment as it relates to this particular case (not knowing the individuals involved), we can say dangling 2,000 year prison terms over people’s heads in such a Damoclean way simply because they had the foresight to profit from these vices … well, that’s ridiculous.
Here’s what should happen … 1) Decriminalize these vices. 2) Tax them fairly so as to provide for core functions of government, and 3) Hold people accountable for their own behavior.
It’s simple …
39 comments
Anybody know Boz’s real name???
Sandi Morals
Funny: Boz’s comments and Rocky’s are almost EXACT in their ignorance, and media cliche…
Fuey on youie
Emily??
His name is not now, nor has it ever been “Emily.” For some reason, he latched on to the identity of a real person, “Emily Peterkin” and posted under it here and on several other sites, including The Sun News in Myrtle Beach. The real Emily Peterkin (either descended from or related some way to the late Pulitzer Prize winning Julia Peterkin, it is generally assumed) has complained a good deal about the deception on his part — on Facebook, and here on FITS. The Sun News has apparently banned the fake account.
Someone recently has been applying that account, using the same avatar, and being snarky toward GT. That is not the real Emily Peterkin, either, and even though it is obviously being done by someone who doesn’t care for him or his blather, it is also disrespectful of the real human being it misrepresents.
I know…I’m just giving him shit for being an asshat.
Karl knows yours, meaning both given name and surname, but would not spill the beans. Not sure whether or not he’s still associated, but the integrity he showed by not outing your identity puts the lie to what you spout about the general integrity of FITSNews.
Hi hi
Good to see you again! Being the soul of integrity, I know you won’t spill the beans on GT. Won’t tell us if he has priors, or what his MO was in his life of crime, if he does. Good for you. Damn it.
sorry, brah
Drugs and whores in Myrtle Beach? No way!!!
Drugs and whores in Myrtle Beach?
Aunt Pittypat! Fetch TBG his smelling salts!
Didn’t happen. Couldn’t have. Not here. This is a family beach.
What a waste of Federal taxes! What moral value can a society have if peccadilloes are illegal?
That is the purview of the federal Department of In Your Pants, just down the hall from the Small Animal Administration.
FITS believes it’s OK to drive drunk… or high…. until you hit someone. Then you just what, let insurance cover it? Or does FITS even believe in insurance?
Where does he say that? Unless you are responding to one of his previously stated arguments, you have simply invented a straw man to blow down.
Cops have to do something to distract from the fact that they break the law with impunity.
I am soooooooooo excited. We are becoming Vegas and Miami. This should bring in lots of tax revenues and bad guys and soon we will have our own TV shows. CSI: Myrtle Beach. I can see it now. Think of the job creation.
Today “Damoclean”, yesterday “effecasous”. We all know you went to the University of South Carolina. You’re not fooling anyone.
I support you in this Will. Not because I view these vices are an asset to our struggling communities, but because people sitting in government and making these decisions are corrupt themselves and they need to pull the log out of their own eye before even looking at the speck in other person’s eye. These raids and display of power are all too often a distraction from the real scammers and probably mostly helps the careers of a few and has absolutely makes no difference to common man’s plight and pursuit of decent wages, steady job and a piece of the extinguishing American dream. I guess the best known example is right at our state house. That Stephen Goldfinch fella’s criminal charges, making $5 million off of illegally selling stem cells, quietly settling treasure hunting scheme, impending ethics violations……and look at the consequences…nothing…a re-election to boot and now I hear that he is in the house judiciary committee, aint that something? The clear message sent to public is that the law operates by two standards….one for the powerful and another for the rest.
Whether or not actual prostitution took place on the premises of Rose’s strip club in MB (and many say it did), this post by Sic is off the mark a bit in including it. That has been alleged of this and other strip clubs owned by Rose in the past, and was one of the reasons the local authorities closed this one down. However, he own other clubs which do not have strippers.
The mention of drugs in the post is more accurate, according to the indictment — but the real issue seems to be multi-state money laundering through several business concerns, whatever the source of the money itself. That’s RICO. Is that OK? If everything, basically, is OK for a business to do, simply because there is a market demand for what they offer, why even have the FBI, etc., ever mess with them for any of it? And why make a big deal of it on this blog if they are investigating someone or rumored to be about to take them down?
This points to the inherent limitations of strict Libertarian ideals, when one tries to apply them in every instance. Made all the more stark by this website’s unwavering hypocritical support for governments using eminent domain to steal land from citizens to make way for a pipeline that mainly benefits a bunch of crony corporatists in Big Oil.
You make good points there, Buz.
Well, thanks. I have a feeling I’ll have to take a cold tater an’ wait out by the dumpster before Will will respond on the last point, however. Or any of it, actually.
On the prostitution part of it, I went and checked out several stories on this bust from different media outlets. None mentioned prostitution. As for the standing case against Rose on the one strip club they shut down and the one he’s been trying to open, I recall there being a suggestion that prostitution was suspected, but never saw that it had been proven. It’s always. Some of the other clubs closed down in the same series of sweeps, locally, has prostitution clearly stated as one of the problems. That was especially true of the video stores with peep show booths, where it was mainly gay tricking and (we presume) pimping that contributed to them being “a nuisance.”
All I want to know is, WHEN ARE MORE STATE LAWMAKERS TO BE CHARGED AND ARRESTED FOR FEDERAL CRIMES????? …… Over 2 million citizens of South Carolina have been repeatedly promised that federal arrest of dozens of SC legislatures and their cronies were to be made before the end of January 2015. And they are waiting while tapping their toes, fingers, and getting angrier each day that the son of a bitches in the are allowed to remain free from PRISON.
.
Even former SC Speaker of the House, Bobby Harrell has VIOLATED his probation and his Plea Agreement. His suspended sentence must be revoked and the other charges must be brought against him. The fucked up shit with these people we elected is old – and must come to a total end by what ever legal means necessary.
Nothing like a little Jewish lightening to hit Front Street just before the Feds start wrapping up their case. Somebody was tipped off a long time ago.
Jewish lightening
…and an alleged crime racket run by what appears to be an Irishman, a Russian and an Italian.
A veritable grand slam of ethnic organised crime stereotypes!
What’s the first thing two Greeks do when they meet? They open a restaurant. What’s the first thing two Italians do when they meet? They rob a Greek restaurant.
… and the Jewish Lightning is what? What every Italian needs when he gets caught? A good jewish trial lawyer?
It’s the black mesh nylons and those fuck-me pumps… and *seedy bars*.. and movies about them! if we outlaw *those*, we’ll throw cold water on this whole problem.
We need to put salt peter in the water, not fluoride!
Let’s get back to our ROOTS!
An update, of sorts: The Solicitor in Horry, Richardson, has stated that they believed prostitution had gone on at the Gold Club, along with drug use, but that had not been what they went after that particular club for — and that he didn’t know about the fed stuff until he read about it in the media. Also that if the feds had asked him to back off entirely, he would have done so.
A new story about Masters, meanwhile, seems entirely bogus. Customer rolled by stipper in the VIP, men with a gun and a cattle prod help her do it, then kick him out the back door. Drunken fool was apparently not even believe by the cops, and no arrests were made. Yet it made the news, anyway.
These
Guys that use young girls and profit from them should go to jail and not see the light of day.
All the missing girls and connection
A group of masons that use their power to use missing girls to profit from their youth. The leak to these guys is within their own group. He got so scared by the fact of info coming out and someone knowing what is going on…..these guys need to look within their own brother’s to see the leak. Why take the blame for ever thing.
Yes masons. Baldheaded masons. They didn’t include sex trafficking in these charges. But it will all come out. Hold on to your hats. Their are more as they call the brothers that will be charged. Brothers aren’t reAlly brothers. One got scared by the fact they he will go down because someone close found out. Sex trafficking!!!!: having an airplane that can fly these girls out and the drugs. Into small airports. Lol. More info to come.
Even through they make brothers do illegal stuff to pledge their mouths closed. Doesn’t alwAys keep mouths close. A brother got scared.
Iiiiii