Hi, everybody. It's Deborah Roberts, co anchor of 2020. We're bringing you more 2020 each week with the 2020 true crime vault. That's right. You're going to hear a story pulled from our archives shows that we just can't seem to get out of our heads. And we think you're going to be drawn in, too. Thanks for listening. Coming up, you for strippers in Manhattan and queens who are accused of drugging customers. This story, sex strippers, drugs, and rich guys. I mean, it's made for tabloids. I heard it was going to be made. And film movie. Walt. Doc. I knew I had a movie. A group of women who were working in strip clubs in and around New York City. The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules. This is a story about my life and how things got crazy. I wouldn't say we were evil con women. You could say that I'm a businesswoman. I was just in the wrong business. These women would call themselves entrepreneurs. The police. They'd call them criminals. Are you married? Aw, that sucks.

In order to make the scam work, they needed the men to be almost knocked unconscious.

I gave him a bump of blow and he fell asleep.

Men would wake up the next morning and discover that not only did they spend more than they thought, they don't even remember what they were spending it on. I told her, you're nothing but a thief. I told her, you're nothing but a swindler.

You're no good. The truth is, they're survivors. We're all hustling. That's the point. What makes a good hustler? Can't give you all my secrets. Body look good.

I'm John Quinones. It had all the makings of a modern day movie. Sex, money, and women taking control. But the story of hustlers isn't just fiction. It's inspired by the real life story of a group of women who went from hustling for tips at a strip club to taking business into their own hands, going as far as conspiring to drug male targets and fleece them for all they could. What caused these women to cross over to a life of crime? As we first reported in 2019, they tell a story of life lived on the edge of the allure, of fast money and of a dark underbelly hidden amidst the glamorous bright lights of the city that never sleeps. New York has always been a city of dreams. It's more than dreams. It's fantasies. It attracts people who have made it or people who want to make it.

Every time I come to Manhattan, I fit in. This is where I belong. The energy, the fast paced, the hustle. Rosie was from Rockland county. She was smart, she was quick.

When she was growing up, she used to buy candy and bring it to school and sell it for a profit.

My childhood was a little rough. My mom was working two, three jobs, and my father was kind of absent. I was always the black sheep of the family. She dropped out of school and became a waitress at 17 years old. And that's when I started hustling. Because you work off of tips. The harder you work, the nicer you are, the more money you're going to get.

Rosie is bubly smart. She's cunning, but not in a bad way.

She was lured into working into a strip club when waiting tables at a diner next door to a strip club, the managers from that club would come in, and Rosie was their waitress, and he was like, oh, you're hot. You should be working there.

So for the hours she's putting in waiting tables at a diner, she says, you know what, man? I could be doing all that same amount of work and be making ten times the money I'm making.

I always wanted to be in New York City dancing. You know, there's a lot of money out there. When I was younger, I used to watch G string divas on HBO. So I was like, oh, if they can do it, I could do it. There were shows on television, on cable tv about strippers that were sort of mainstreaming, if you will, the fact that women can make a living doing this. You add to that Howard Stern talking and interviewing strippers who were becoming stars on his radio show.

Is being a dancer at scores the greatest thing a girl can do?

He glorified it. He made it look so glamorous.

I mean, this is like one of the best looking girls I ever saw at scores. I was checking you out at scores. Scores. Girls always look good. Scores is basically the prototype of the high end gentleman's club, the superstar thing. It's a national brand, it's publicly traded, and the company has clubs all over the country.

So women were definitely aware that this job existed and that this was a way to make good money fast. There were so many ways to make money. There were customers that would pay you to sit and talk for your time. I had a lot of those the first day. I think it was like a quick 2000, $3,000 I ever made one night. What it felt great to have that power, the kind of gentlemen who went to gentlemen's clubs back in the day were like Wall street bros. With a lot of money. At one point, Rosie was making about $10,000 a night from hedge fund managers. It's a rush. You get a high, you get a rush from it.

Rosie was a good fit for this because she was pushing, she was hustling. She was able to read people.

When you first meet a customer, you don't know what kind of buying power they have. First thing you got to do is have a drink with them.

It's the individual taste of the client. It's what they're appealing to. And they learn quickly how to appeal those clients. Is that somebody who's wealthy? Is that somebody who's here just to have one quick drink and look at a pretty woman? Or is that somebody who's here to get hammered and to really spend it?

All of a sudden, the numbers are going off in your head. Like, okay, this guy makes x amount of dollars, he can afford the champagne room. Now, the champagne room is where the girls would say, well, if you want a little extra something, we can take you to the fancy back room.

They'd be escorted to these secret rooms, these private rooms, and that's when the credit cards would blow up.

A champagne room is about 600 to 1000, depending on where you are or what rooms you get.

The more intoxicated you get, the more you're going to spend. And that's the game there, to make you spend more, to get you intoxicated, to start rolling out high end liquor.

Think about a bottle of champagne that you might spend $40 to purchase in a store. That bottle of champagne inside a strip club could be 500, even $1,000. The markups are totally insane. Before you know it, that man has 50 grand charged to his credit card. When I was going to school and working at the same time, I was making my tuition in one night, and I was like, oh, my gosh, school could wait.

When these women are running those calculations and the men are walking in and the men are sitting down, they quickly stop being men and stop being people. They start being dollar figures, and all they want is they want more money.

These men, they felt were there just to see them with their clothes off, didn't take them as real people, and they had a great deal of disdain for them. You see the worst of men when you work in a club. You see the scum of the scum. They're trying to date you. They keep trying to tell you, oh, I want to sleep with you. You know, diamond from the Bronx, right? In the movie Hustlers, Cardi B, who's a huge star in the music world, plays one of the dancers. I'm good at that. And she was actually drawing on some personal experience because she was a stripper in several New York City clubs. I just got so tired of constantly meeting men, knowing that I'm 18 and you like, around 50, and you touching me and you just feel like you own me. So you just say, yeah, you play along. You just string it along for as long as you can and make the money and leave it. Just make you feel like, I don't care. I'm going to hustle you because I know you're trying to hustle my body. That's how I felt, like a lot.

The more someone upset me, the more I would work harder to get more money from them. And little by little, you start seeing why strippers start to hate men. A lot of the club owners are men also, so you feel like they're treating you unfairly with unfair work conditions. Women can make a lot of money working as dancers or strippers at these clubs, but they're at a huge disadvantage because, for starters, they have to pay just to work at the club. In the city, it was about $300 to work. I don't know anybody else who has to pay to go to their job. There's 30 minutes before we get fined. Us girls have to get ready in a snap. They're also having to go around and tip everybody working inside of these clubs. You have to tip a manager so that he will send you good clients. You have to pay out bartenders. There's all taxation there. Bronze book. So in the movie, there's a part where the character destiny, she gets paid out by the manager. He pays her out, and then he has his handout, says, 40%.

Mine's 40% is 160.

You're like, no, I'm doing all the work. I show up every day miserable, drinking to be here, putting up with nonsense. What did you do? You came in a suit. I was so upset that I keep working for hours, hours. And then I have to pay a fee, and then I'm leaving home with nothing. We were fed up with the clubs. We were fed up with the customers. We just said, enough. I snapped. I gave him a lump of blow and he fell asleep.

This show is sponsored by Betterhelp. As we step into 2024, let's switch things up a bit. Instead of the usual new year, new you mantra, how about we focus on what's already going right? What are those aspects of your life that you want to hold on to and expand upon this year? Maybe you've conquered the chaos in one corner of your space. Why not tackle another? Or perhaps you've nailed down that routine of taking supplements, and now you're eyeing that elusive breakfast goal. It's all about building on your strengths. Now, we often get caught up in drastic resolutions. But here's a thought. What if we leverage therapy to uncover our strengths and make changes that truly stick? Therapy isn't just for those who faced major traumas. It's about learning positive coping skills, setting boundaries, and empowering ourselves to be the best version we can be. Speaking of therapy, if you've had the chance to benefit from it, consider sharing your experience. Whether it's discovering coping mechanisms, setting boundaries, or just navigating the complexities of life, therapy has a way of bringing out the best in us. If you're contemplating diving into therapy or looking for a change, why not give betterhelp a shot?

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The perfect place to dump a body.

Inside the search for a serial killer.

Her last phone call was disturbing clues. Body count. Body count. Body count. Remote. Really scared me. Very ritualistic behavior.

Stunning setbacks. They were as stumped as we were. There was a lot of speculation and shocking twists.

We're anxious to have this over with.

Their cases went unsolved. That'll leave you breathless. Until today. Eyewitness to Gilgo Beach, a new podcast available now. Rosie Keough has been making more money than she could have ever imagined working as a stripper. But along with the money came disenchantment, and now forces out of her control are about to change the game entirely. Call it nightmare on Wall street.

Stocks all around the world are tanking.

The stock market plunged 778 points. We are in the midst of a serious financial cris.

When the financial crisis hit in 2008, people were losing their homes. Businesses that had been around for years suddenly ceased to exist overnight. Trillions of dollars in wealth were gone. Every kind of luxury that was not a necessity for life went way down.

A lot of the money that was going into the strip clubs is disappearing.

After the financial collapse, things are so different. The same clients never came back. Any kind of extravagant spending from people on Wall street, which had been like the base of their customers, was just really frowned upon. So I think those clubs just kind of emptied out. So these girls decided they had to find a different way to bring in the big bucks. You weren't getting paid to sit and talk anymore, to hang out. Girls were doing dirty things. There were things that happened with champagne bottles that you can't sit in network television, and it's like, oh, my gosh, not going to do that. So Rosie's in the club, and she doesn't want to work as a prostitute. She wants to find something else to do. Rosie is this enterprising hustler, and the world is amid all of these major changes. So she teams up with Samantha Barbash. She was a single mom from the Bronx. She was ambitious. Samantha Barbash was like the queen bee of the strip club scene. She had connections with the hosts and the customers. She was a veteran, and she was somebody you wanted to have on your side. Rosie sees Samantha coming into the club.

Samantha has her Louboutins. Samantha looks great. And Samantha is not dancing. She's doing marketing.

She wanted to cultivate her own customers, so she stepped outside the club. Let's go find our own clients. Rather wait for them to walk in the door. It's under the umbrella of marketing and promotion that the scam really starts taking shape.

The strippers don't call it marketing, they call it fishing, as in casting a line, see who we can catch. Reel them in, get them in at the club.

The hustle starts from a very legal thing that happens every night in New York City. Men are out in the town. They meet an attractive woman at a bar. They're having a fun time. She suggests, hey, let's go to a strip club. That would be fun.

And Samantha goes out and recruits Rosie and Karina to help her. Karina Pascocci worked in these clubs as a waitress, not as a dancer. She describes herself as young and impressionable. I think my role in the group, I think I was bait. I was just new and green. So normally you would go to, like, a happy hour. I was dressed in a blazer. I was pretending that I also came out of work and had a rough day. People were like, what kind of work are you in? I'm like, I'm in marketing. These women are in sales, and they know their targets. They can differentiate between $100 watch and a $40,000 watch. We're looking for hublots, Rolexes, Patek Philippe. I mean, we went all over the city. Lounges, bars, even restaurants, steakhouses. If you saw a black american express, you knew you had a high roller. You're like, oh, we have a shark. A shark is a serious high roller that these girls were able to reel in. And we would bring clients back to the club.

For every dollar they spend, they get a percentage of that money.

And your goal was just to get them to spend as much as possible. So literally, we're talking. That meter is running. The second you walk in and it's running fast and it's running high, that customer walks in, pays a cover charge, pays exorbitant money for food and drink, will pay a woman to get a lap dance.

You could be paying several thousands of dollars per hour just for the service charges, for having the strippers, the dancers, or the masseuses come in and spend time in the room.

So it's at this point that everything starts to cross the line and go from legal to basically illegal, because they're charging things on these men's credit cards. That never happened. Sometimes the charges on these credit cards were so big that the banks would call and confirm that the charges were legit, and the women would pick up the phone pretending to be the assistants so that the charges could be confirmed and ultimately went through.

The hustle became something that was no longer legit.

I would be on the phone with a credit card company, and I would say, oh, we are trying to put a $10,000 charge through. It got declined. Can you tell me what's going on?

Taking somebody's credit card and running up their American Express for $100,000 is a crime.

I didn't think what I was doing was wrong. Now, looking back, it's crazy.

The scam takes an even darker turn that involves prostitution.

The customers were expecting to be satisfied.

So all of a sudden now, these men insisted on sex.

Why did sex help them in a scam? Because sex helps in every scam.

The men are led to believe that they're paying all this money because they are actually going to be able to engage in sex acts.

So Samantha and I were like, okay, we need to find girls. We did call girls from backpage and Craigslist. I guess it's a form of outsourcing. I saw the connection, I saw the opportunity. And little by little. You find yourself doing things that sound crazy. Somewhere along the line, they came up with a bright idea to drug them. They just give them, as they said, just a sprinkle of MDMA and ketamine.

It's not a day drug, like a rupee, because that totally incapacitates you. This is something that'll put you into a euphoric state, so you will be more complacent. You're agreeable to just about anything.

The women would whip out that credit card and start charging five bottles of the best and most expensive champagne, another five bottles of the most expensive scotch. Get him a lap dance. Let's do a second hour in the champagne room, and he is under the influence of this drug cocktail. They ran this con like a business. I would like to think Samantha was the CEO and I was the CFO. They were a criminal enterprise.

You want more and more and more. You can't get enough money, and that's when you start making mistakes.

All of a sudden, you just lose control of the situation. You're like, oh, my God. Just happened. What did I do? I think these women, the better organized women, were making upwards of half a million a year. They're living the life. They're wearing all the clothes that any woman would want in her closet. Christian Louboutins, Chanel, Gucci. I liked nice things. Most businesses, when things are going really well, decide to keep pushing the boundaries. And that's what these women did. They innovated. Unfortunately, that innovation was illegal. It was a little illegal. And then one thing led to the next. So things progress, and little by little, you find yourself doing things that sound crazy.

The greed actually undermined their entire scam.

Samantha had amassed over the years, like, a huge phone list. And she would just kind of run down the list every night like a telemarketer and kind of call these guys and be like, hey, what's up? What are you doing? Samantha was so good at texting clients that she would set up these dates.

Dr. Unin enters the story as just another one of the marks. He runs into Samantha somewhere, doesn't even remember the interaction, and that at the time, they had exchanged numbers, but nothing had progressed beyond that. Dr. Eunon, he's a single, never married guy, cardiac surgeon from New Jersey.

Dr. Eunon was the perfect target because he's wealthy, he's successful, and basically looking for love with money to spend. He was set up on a date with Karina. Yes. Samantha had texted him using my picture. She'd be using pictures of some of these younger women just to lure them in. And we would kind of coach the girl to say, okay, your name is such and such. You guys met here, and you work here. So we have a storyline for every girl, so it's no different than an actress reading a script. So what did she text you?

Hi. Remember me? I'm Karina. I'm studying to become a nurse, and I really am looking for a nice guy, and I would love to go out to dinner with you. And we ended up going on a.

Date, and everything just transpired from there.

Dr. Yunin invites her to dinner, and it's actually going to be a dinner that's going to be the two of them, plus Dr. Yunan's friend and the friend's wife. And she's, you know, I'm running a little. Know, I wanted to spend some time alone with you. So ultimately, she shows up at the end of dinner. Dr. Yoon's best friend and his wife stay until dessert, and then ultimately it gets late and they leave.

What did the two of you do then, given the fact that she arrived over dessert?

We sat down, we had some wine together.

We had drinks. He was very intoxicated.

They finished the bottle of wine, and Dr. Unins excuses himself to go to the men's room. And upon return, the last thing he remembers was drinking the remaining couple sips in his wine. And then I started feeling warm, flushy, and the vision was a little blurry and cloudy.

And what did you chalk that up to?

I really didn't think twice. And then I don't remember much after that.

Well, that could happen when you drink too much alcohol. It's called blacking out.

Next thing he knows is he wakes up the next morning in his hotel room, not knowing what had happened the last number of hours. And then Karina had left me a note saying, thank you very much for an unbelievable time.

Help me understand why you weren't freaked out.

I guess I just got caught up in the moment with her. The swindle was that men would wake up the next morning and discover that not only did they spend more than they thought with those strippers last night, but they don't even remember part of what they were spending it on. So during the text messages subsequently with the girl, he says to her, when did it end up happening? Last night. She said, oh, you had a lot of drinks. We went out. We had a great time. Thanks. It was great. She says, it'd be great to get together again. They meet a second time, and a very similar kind of thing. Happens.

What did you do after dinner?

I went to the bathroom. Then I signed a bill. And then I don't remember the event. Second date. When he woke up, he again was told by her that we had a wonderful night. You had a little too much to drink. I'm sorry if you don't remember.

And no alarm bells are going off for you.

No alarm bells?

Why not?

Well, I was naive and foolish. I believed her. I trusted her. I mean, who hasn't done a stupid thing or two for a beautiful girl in life? He was sold that she was interested. He was sold that maybe this is a girl he could have a nice time with and go out on a few dates or have dinner with and introduce him to his friends.

He had texted me almost religiously, and I kind of felt bad when he said he had gotten concert tickets.

They agree to meet a third time, and this time it's going to be a van Morrison concert at Madison Square garden. We went to the concert together, and all she kept asking was for wine. But at Van Morrison concerts, once the concert starts, they don't serve alcohol.

That was a dreadful night. There was no alcohol that night, so I actually had to talk to him. Sometimes you get tired of pretending and fake laughing all night. So that was rough. It's emotionally draining to do this.

And some people go to have a drink afterwards. And then again, Dr. Union remembers drinking a last half a glass of wine.

So what's the next thing you remember?

Waking up in the hotel. And then there was a message left by American Express. They said there was excessive charges on your credit card. It was close to $100,000 on a place called Robert's Steakhouse. Can you please call us?

Scores has a steakhouse called Roberts. And Roberts is the name that shows up on your credit card. You had $100,000 of charges. Did they tell you on one, two, or three nights?

Yeah, they said it was three separate nights. And then I put it together. It was every time I went out to dinner with her. Dr. Union immediately confronts Karina. I said, I can't believe you did this to me. You spent all this money on my credit card? She turned immediately red. She says, it wasn't me. It was my sisters. It was my cousin. It was the man on the moon. She came up with all kinds of excuses, and I told her, you're nothing but a thief. I told her, you're nothing but a swindler. I don't want to see you. I don't want to talk to you ever again.

I was definitely apologetic I definitely 100% felt bad because I didn't even know his bill was that high until I had found out from score's manager and from Samantha.

He thought he had a girlfriend. He thought he was in a romance. She offered him something wholly different.

It was a good scam that worked. Yes, because a lot of them had wives and high power positions. They didn't want any problems. They just wanted to pay the bill and move on.

So very shortly after, American Express does their preliminary investigation, and they determine that they are fraudulent charges. They were all forged receipts, and they weren't even my own handwriting.

So Amex refused to pay scores, and scores came after Dr. Yunan.

They wanted to destroy me. Scores then files a lawsuit against Dr. Eunon. He hires a lawyer and countersues, saying he was drugged. And then scores. And the women defamed him. That was their absolute goal, to embarrass me. I had never been to scores. Dr. Eunon says. I don't know what happened. I'd never had an account with scores. I had never even stepped foot into scores. Dr. Eunon, though, is on camera at scores showing up. And then the New York City tabloids explode. We're just weeks into this year, and the news is already non stop. Two overseas wars, a presidential election already testing the democratic process, a former president in court. It can feel impossible to keep up with, but we can help. I'm Brad Milkey, the host of start here, the daily podcast from ABC News. Every morning, my team and I get you caught up on the day's news in a quick, straightforward way that's easy to understand. So kickstart your morning. Start smart with start here and ABC News, because staying informed shouldn't feel like a choreograph. A cardiac surgeon has filed himself out almost a hundred thousand dollars after several dates with Karina, one of the women working with former strip club workers and suspected of drugging men and running up their credit cards.

But unlike many of their marks, Yunnan has gone public with his story. And now the women are about to get some serious attention from a most unwelcome source. The police union wasn't the only victim in this scam, but nobody wanted to press charges.

When the stories would pop up, everybody went, ha ha, what a doofus. You know, you just got drunk and you spent too much money with women who were scantily clad and enticing you to spend.

When there was a charge that was disputed, they would say, look, he was here.

So we would tell them, listen, it's a losing battle. Just give it up. We have you on camera. The police had been aware of this scam for some time, but they finally got a solid tip, so they set up a sting.

We set up an operation in a luxury hotel. We have control inside a room. We do audio and video, and we'd have agents in other rooms in case there was an issue. The investigation team had a very, very clear goal that night in the sting. They wanted the guy to be approached. They wanted him to be drugged. They wanted to see the credit card being taken, run.

They had a DEA agent pose as a rich guy. He did all the things that would make him a target.

The way I dressed, the way I acted. We did our investigation ahead of time, so we knew they were going to come to this high end hotel bar. He sits there. An hour, hour and a half goes by, and like clockwork, they find him.

And what was the opening line? I'm curious.

It was basically if I wanted a party.

And you said yes.

So we ended up in the hotel room.

I actually wasn't supposed to be there that night. I was home in my apartment by myself, sleeping, and Rosie had called me. We went to the Gansborg hotel in the meatpacking district, and she told me to wait downstairs. And she went up there with another girl, another dancer. And right next door, on the other side of the wall, is a whole cadre of detectives and DEA agents watching everything unfold. Did they give you something to drink?

We had brought drinks up to the hotel room, knowing that these drinks would possibly be drugged.

Did you begin to act like you were under the influence?

Yes, I did. They're trying to wake me up using various methods. They grabbed a beer from the hotel fridge, and they had me drink that.

Here, stop. Babe, are you married? Aw, that sucks. Rosie had called me to come upstairs, and I had seen a gentleman on the bed passed out. And I said, what's going. You know? This woman said, well, he's really sick. I gave him too much. Did you hear something? I gave him a bumper blowing. Just didn't make sense to me. So I had went up to him, and I had taken his pulse. You shouldn't have gave him that bump. I've never seen anyone go to sleep after a bump. He was breathing completely normal. I knew he wasn't blacked out. I knew he wasn't sick. His heart was fine. This DEA agent is doing a bang up job acting, and the detectives next door are freaking out. Don't worry.

We knew that he would pose as if he had been naturally drugged, but we were afraid that he had actually been drugged.

Right.

There was a point where the girls had crawled on the bed and they had a wet cloth, and it looks like they put the cloth over his mouth. I had actually, several times given the order to move in, and it was only split second that Danny would stop me and say, no, not yet. He just gave a signal. I was, like, moving my leg, shaking, showing, like, hey, you know, I'm okay.

Well, the two women become increasingly agitated because they can't rouse him. Oh, my God. Slapping him on the face. Come on.

We were just hoping the girls would take his credit card and leave and go swipe it. I felt like they were like vampires hovering over me. My blood was the credit card they needed to get me to this strip bar with my credit card to do their business.

So they're now freaking out because they need this guy up an ambulatory to walk into the strip club, past the cameras so that they could claim he's perfectly fine and let's get his credit card and start spending.

And then they got him up off the bed, and that's when they were getting a little physical with him. It got a little intrusive. No, it was getting to the point where they weren't leaving. They just wanted him to get to this club. So we kind of came to a decision like, this is going to go on all night.

The problem was the DEA couldn't let the agent leave the room because he would then be in an uncontrolled environment and at risk.

So had some individuals pose as hotel security and enter the room.

And finally they burst into the room.

Is this guy. Is he alive?

Yeah.

This guy doesn't look good. He need an ambulance? I mean, they had no regard for his health if he was dead or not.

They're not able to make the arrest that they were hoping to make, because.

In the end, they could not run the credit card. But it wasn't a failure because we did get some evidence.

They were able to get security camera footage, video and audiotape of these women arguing over. How much did you give them? No, don't give them that.

Who is that?

No, you don't need alcohol. You just need a slow corona. What did you give them? You gave them too much. They got lots of incriminating evidence that would help their case.

They were able to retrieve the glass with the spiked drink, and that was critical because they were able to then test it in the DEA lab to see precisely what the drug cocktail was.

And when you had that tested, what was in it?

You have a sedative, and you have a stimulant. So you take Molly to get you up and alert, and you have a sedative to put you to bed. It's very, very dangerous. Everybody is lucky that nobody died.

Gig is up. Strippers are under arrest tonight, accused of drugging customers. The whole world goes black, and everything just goes silent. I think it was a shock.

Um.

We had gotten many calls over the years from guys who said, oh, I was ripped off at a strip club, you know, so what do you expect? Of course, nobody ever believes these men. Dr. Unin convinced American Express that that $135,000 bill was the result of a crime.

Scores is out the 135. So they start fighting with the doctor. Remember that when you're there. They have you on camera. Can't say you weren't there. The gentleman's club will fight you if you try to fight the bill.

It was a big deal. A rich doctor, a stripper, drugs that had all the earmarks for a tabloid story. I was like, oh, crap. This is not good. This is being blasted everywhere. It's not good. I think these women were banking on the fact that no man would go public like this, would be willing to be subjected to the humiliation.

And what was interesting was one of the NYPD detectives reached out for Dr. Eunon, Detective Dan Palotowski. When I told my story, he believed me right away, and we started working together and trying to help with the case.

And if the police hadn't had Dr. Eunon, they couldn't have made the case.

He's willing to say exactly what happened. We were able to identify more victims and convince those victims to come to a grand jury because that's what we needed. Can't have just one victim. Within a couple of months, the women involved in the case were arrested.

Strippers are under arrest tonight, accused of drugging customers and then racking up huge bills on the customers charge cards. They make the bust. Gig is up. These women knew they were taking great risks. And the greater the scam, the bigger it becomes, because you believe at first you're golden. But then you realize they're coming. The day of my arrest, they come to my house early in the morning, and I was taken into handcuffs.

Among the alleged victims was 41 year old New Jersey cardiologist Ziyad Yunan. The prosecutors say the victims were so thoroughly drugged, they didn't even remember being in a club.

It's like, oh, my God, the whole world. Everybody knows what I did. I was working in Manhattan at a clothing store at the time. So when they had come to apprehend me, I was really surprised. And they know, you know, why we're here. And I was like, I actually really don't know why you're here. All types of emotions are running through you. I think I was shocked. There was three big DEA agents. I mean, when you get arrested, the whole world goes black and everything just goes silent.

They start to break down almost immediately. When they're arrested, they make statements. They have evidence that they don't think they have, that the police have. They have text messages, all kinds of things. They have credit card receipts. Dr. Union saved text messages and voicemail messages, which he could share with law enforcement.

Hi, Zaid, it's Kareem. I just want to speak to you about a few things that have to do with your bill.

They also have the women on tape talking about the fact that they give them these drugs.

Here, sit, baby. Drink some of this.

They immediately cooperated. They knew how to get out of the heat.

Rosie was the first to take a plea deal. I had a child to take care of. I decided not to go to trial. I decided to just make it all stop. And taking five years probation and staying at home and focusing on my daughter and just being the mom that I should have been. To her, the outcome could have been worse.

Karina was followed by the media on the day she walked into court and actually explained some of her conduct to crime watch daily.

Today, I'm going to accept my plea. Hopefully, it goes as smooth as possible.

We were there for her day in court, which brought a tough pill to swallow. For the massage girl accused of drugging her client.

I pled guilty to conspiracy for grand theft. I'm taking my first breaths as a felon. I'll be serving 16 weekends at Rikers island, and I will have five years probation. I definitely feel responsible for just luring people in and manipulating them.

The girls need to be accountable for their responsibilities and their actions. The case is over. One of the judges threw out essentially the scores'case for 135,000. The judge also threw out Dr. Yunin's defamation case. I mean, it's affected me tremendously. I'm not as trusting as I used to be, but, yeah, I always stand up for what's right, and someone had to stand up and stop it.

Everybody's going to have their own judgment about what these women were and what motivated them and what drove them. I mean, people might not find me remorseful, but I definitely went through my own remorse and privacy hurt people tend to hurt people. So at the time when I was hurting these people and I was doing wrong things, I was also hurt myself.

They may justify their actions by claiming they are victims, but they are not. The irony of the story is that the two ringleaders, Samantha and Rosie, cooperated with law enforcement, and they ended up not getting any jail time.

I thought that the women got off with less than a slap on their naked wrists. I thought they got off completely.

The investigators would have preferred a little bit more time, some more of a stringent sentence.

In addition to scores, the women were taking these victims to other clubs as well. The big question, obviously, is the nightclub had to be in on it.

Our reporting has shown that the clubs were absolutely investigated. But in the end, the feds and the NYPD were unable to find that they had committed a crime or that they knew about it. I think it's important to remember that we took down one organization that's operating in one city, and we've had phone calls across the country from men who the story is the same.

What's amazing is that these women were incredibly successful at this scam for as long as they were. We don't know how many victims there were total. Their downfall was that they wanted more.

It seems like it's a made for motion picture kind of story.

I was like, well, doc, I knew I had a movie. To great fanfare. The movie hustlers premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. This was a crazy story, and I'm glad we have a moment in time now captured on film. So in the movie hustlers, Constance Wu is playing the character that is inspired by my life. I was close.

The character played by Jennifer Lopez is inspired by Samantha Barbash, the ringleader.

When you're in these worlds that are kind of glamorous but also dangerous, it's a slippery slope. It's easy to kind of go down the wrong path if you let yourself. I'm sure in the movie, they're all going to be like superheroes. The truth is, in this story, these women were running a criminal enterprise, period. So were these women victimized by predatory business practices on the parts of these strip clubs? Maybe. Were they victimized by obnoxious men? Yeah, it's pretty bad, too. But it doesn't give you a free pass to go out and break the law. That's the bottom line.

I don't think that Samantha or Rosie can ever stop being the kind of person they are. Right? They are hustlers.

I feel like, yeah, I still have that in me, but I've tried to learn to flip that and just use it positively.

I don't know where they're going to go from here. I have a sense they'll be fine in whatever world they find themselves in.

I'm getting my associates currently in criminal psychology. Rosie has seized on the opportunity of this movie coming out. She's working on a memoir. I'm here to take accountability for my actions and just let everyone know that I learned from it. I was in the wrong industry. If I chose a different crowd, things could have been great for me.

They accepted responsibility for their conduct. They took their punishments, and they've moved on.

What you do does not define who you are. It's what you learn from it. It's what you do after it. It's who you become later on. What this is Deborah Roberts that does it for this episode of the 2020 true crime Vault. Tune in on Friday nights at 09:00 for all new broadcast episodes of 2020 on ABC. Thank you for listening.

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