Nici's Girls exposed

British tabloid News of the World claims to have uncovered an elite Hollywood prostitution ring.

The racket's star-studded catalogue of girls for rent includes a BBC presenter, a British supermodel, a Hollywood actress and an international catwalk queen.

The global operation—called Nici's Girls and run by Los Angeles madam Michelle Braun —is now being investigated by the FBI after a daring undercover probe led by our famous Fake Sheik.

Last night the American law agents were studying a damning series of e-mails and conversations, secretly taped by our team, as they were offered a stream of high-profile girls willing to have sex from £10,000 a time. [...]

VIP punters are recruited by word of mouth, and only those considered wealthy enough are given access to Braun's secret website which details top models, actresses and Playboy pin-ups up for hire.

Customers pay up to £40,000 for a night of passion with Nici's Girls, as well as providing first-class air tickets and five-star hotel accommodation.

It took our team, posing as Arab businessmen, several months to infiltrate the ring.

Click through for more details, wiretap transcriptions and cheeky hints at celebrity hookers' identities. (Link snagged from Fleshbot.) No URL for the "secret website", but Daze Reader's own daring undercover probe googled "Nici's Girls" and found nicisgirls.com.

Nici's Girls is hardly a new or secret outfit. Another account of Nici's Girls pops up in this 2001 Philadelphia magazine article about a local kid who made millions trading internet stocks, then blew it all on prostitutes, strippers and eventually a Playmate girlfriend.

He churned through strippers as if sheer numbers could fill the hole in him. But again he grew bored, and this time he turned to the Internet. It was there that he stumbled on Nici's Girls, a website that was just then taking the online escort business to a new level. Men willing to pay a $5,000 "admission fee" could gain entré to Nici's "Millionaires Club," billed simply and mysteriously as a harem of unnamed porn stars, Penthouse Pets and Playboy Playmates. That was enough for Yagalla. He called Nici, who was herself just 21, and said he was young and had a lot of money. She matched him with a pin-up girl who came to his home and flew with him to Puerto Rico. The four days only cost him $28,000 plus airfare.

Soon, Yagalla was flying two new Nici's girls a week to his house in Wilmington, laying out $10,000 to $20,000 for the pleasure of their company and the only sort of love he knew. He relished the jittery feeling of driving to the Philadelphia Airport to pick up a girl. Eventually, he started flying to L.A. to rendezvous with Nici's "specials," including porn megastar Jenna Jameson.

Nici was fast becoming the new Heidi Fleiss, L.A.'s reigning madam, and Yagalla, as a preferred (and relentless) customer, ended up befriending her and learning her real name: Michelle Braun. She had grown up ordinary, discovered certain talents, and gotten sidetracked, not unlike Yagalla. Both were aggressive and in their early 20s, and they shared an interest in talking about Nici's clients and how screwed-up Nici's girls were.

Eventually, Yagalla asked Nici to set him up with Playmates. She had a connection at Playboy, so all Yagalla had to do was page through the magazine and, when he saw a girl he liked, call Nici. She'd obtain a phone number or e-mail address for the girl and make the pitch. The women she set Yagalla up with included two Playmates of the Year in addition to Tishara Cousino, whom Nici priced at $40,000 for an introductory weekend.

On the other hand, Nici's alleged roster of celebrity call girls should be viewed with skepticism. Luke Ford wrote back in the late 1990s about pornstars listed as available for "escort" work on nicisgirls.com and other sites, then later qualified his findings.

I often write half-a-story. Like the one on porn star escorts which is a difficult subject to begin with as many of the porn girls who do escort, will deny it when asked by a reporter.

On the particular post that Kernes quotes, I ran with half a story - that at least one escort agency in New York listed various Vivid girls and other porn stars as available for escort work. What I missed, and did not realize at the time, was that escort agencies like www.nicisgirls.com routinely lie about the girls they have available for hooking. And many porn stars actively cooperate in such deceptions in exchange for hits to their web site.

For the record, I do not believe that Janine, Missy, Jill Kelly or Kobe Tai do escort work. But as of 2/15/99, Missy and Kobe Tai were listed as available for escort work at www.nicisgirls.com.

From my 2/12/99 update: Luke wrote to Don Osterholt, "The web site www.nicisgirls.com lists your wife Tabitha Stevens as an escort. Is this true?"

Don replies: "Luke my friend, let me give you a little internet education. As you know I run my wife's official web site at www.tabithastevens.com. "Her site has been very successful even though it has only been up a few months. One of the reasons for its success is that we have managed to drive a fair amount of traffic to the site. Traffic converts to paying members so we are always trying to think of the most creative ways to get guys to visit her site. If you look closely at the nici's girls site you will see a banner on the page that has tabitha pictures, that banner links directly to tabitha's official web site. "Escort sites as very busy sites and it is very easy to get traffic Reddirected from an escort site to a commercial web site. That is the sole purpose of the pictures you see on the nici's girls web site. I know its a cheap ploy buy it works. In fact, we use this tactic successfully for a couple of our web site clients like Missy, Nici Sterling and Melanie Stone. "If you are looking for the inside scoop on escorts, nici's girls is probably not your best choice. Most of the girls on the site do not escort but buy banner advertising space to direct traffic to their personal web sites."

More Luke vs Nici if you're interested.

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