Actually the legal papers from the club are due on Wednesday. The judge said he would try to rule by the end of the week which probably means he will rule sometime in the next two or three weeks.
I hope you are right JS69 - this thing has been in the local news so many times these past weeks that I fear public pressure will make the judge expedite the case for a temporary closing.
If the judge grants a temporary injunction, doesn't that compel the club to close immediately? PP might appeal the results of a trial, whenever that occurs, but isn't their only recourse for an injunction to have it LIFTED by a higher court after it has been enforced? And it's hard to imagine them getting that.
As a resident of this area, where did this money come from? $15-30 grand to investigate s strip club? Very fishy. I agree with some others that the someone stopped getting their cut and they are responding by this.
@big d -I think IRONCAT might had it right. I have been thinking for a couple of weeks now that it might be something else behind the scenes. Didn't give it much thought at first, but it seems so now.
IRONCAT:
Inside scoop on Platinum Plus in Greenville
Last Comment: April 4, 2015
April 2, 2015 • Well, I finally got some inside information on PP in Greenville, although, it wasn't easy - my contacts were pretty tight lipped on the topic. What I have heard is that this is more of an internal investigation of some deputies who were providing tip-offs to PP management when the vice guys were getting ready to investigate. Apparently a bunch of deputies were fired. That is all I can get so far.
Wow! 1 to 2 thousands per agent per visit. I believe the average person spent $37 in the link provided. I believe that number. I often spent a lot more but I never got any of the treatment these high roller agents got.
Maybe they wanted to prepare to become secret service agents and trips to brothels in South America or something.
I wonder what justifies spending all this tax payer money when 99 percent of the public never spends this kind of money? Only the truly wealthy would ever do something like that. The one percent are so wealthy they can pick up girls left and right without even visiting strip clubs. Just look at Hugh Heffner at the playboy mansion.
This could be a warning to any strip club or business, if a government agency wants to find violators of the law, just offer them so much money that any employee will be willing to look the other way. It doesn't matter if over 99.9% of the public would never spend that much.
I could understand suing the club just to get the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent back. Sounds like a good scheme to use against any business. The best crooks and sneaky people work for the government. Just 3 agents spending 6K a week for a year is about 24K a month for 12 months or about half a million in one year. If they had more maybe they spent a million working on a case against the club. This is big money.
I know someone who took $5 k into platinum plus and failed to find a girl to go to a hotel. I see the agents lured the dancers into a false sense of security. Maybe they read about the system Dougster keeps laughing about.
I think I could go out with a ton of girls at a regular bar for 1K to 2K per visit. wow.
Good point shark. We all know that if you have enough money you will find a stripper that is in need of money badly enough to bend the rules. That's just what these investigators did. They should be charged with entrapment.
Wow, being a cop in Greenville sounds like fun. Maybe these guys are also graduates of Bob Jones University.
Usually the penalty for entrapment is just that the evidence can't be used.
This is where the news media become very important, how they portray this, and how they go after the cops.
The idea that this is an internal investigation of their own people who might be on the take, is a good one. It might be possible. That as reason to pull out all the stops.
But this genitals to face matter, if that is all they have, that ain't much. And again, what did the cop do to instigate that?
People seem to like these Platinum Plus clubs. Not sure what their people would know that other operators don't. Might it just be that they hire more girls, so that they are competing harder against each other, and therefore they wouldn't likely be following the boss's rules.
I wasn't clear when I posted a while back, explaining that it is very hard for LE to make a clean bust if the girls are not openly soliciting. This was an extremely unclean bust.
If the cops were spending that kind of money, then let us not forget about the IRS going after the dancers as well. I can't imagine cause if this is a "real" case that a diary of who the money was spent on isn't present. If the government really wanted to get "mean", then should the dancers put the cash in a bank account with "clean" money (other funds) then the bastards could make a case for "money laundering". Sound ridiculous, but the laws designed for organized crime can be applied to individuals as well. A total crock of crap. But the government can strong arm anyone until they get them to plead guilty for something. I have seen it done and personally maintain a lot of distain for those bureaucrats with too much power.
SC God Cops Wants To Shut Down Greenville Strip Club
VICE SQUAD AT WORK!
|| By FITSNEWS || Crusading moralists in the socially conservative South Carolina Upstate are trying to shut down a strip club for being a “public nuisance” – stepping up their attacks against a facility they’ve repeatedly raided in recent weeks.
The charge – led by local solicitor Walt Wilkins – aims to shut down the Platinum Plus strip club in Greenville, S.C., a facility undercover that’s received tens of thousands of dollars from undercover police officers as part of an ongoing “investigation.”
“We have asked the judge to shut them down pending a merits trial and that’s what we’re waiting for the judge to rule on,” Wilkins said last week, according to WLOS TV 13 (Asheville, N.C.).
According to Wilkins, strippers at the club are engaging in prostitution – and performing sex acts on customers (and fellow strippers) inside the club.
Our answer to that? So what …
As we’ve said repeatedly, prostitution should be decriminalized in South Carolina (and all over the country). Especially in a state as dirt poor as the Palmetto State.
But even under current law, how does one prostitution bust over the club’s fourteen-year history constitute a “public nuisance?”
Ridiculous …
We’ve got little use for politicians like Wilkins – nephew of former U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins. He’s a panderer who believes he has the right to sit in judgment of those who choose to spend their time and money on leisure activities he believes are immoral.
So he’s trying to put the company fulfilling those needs out of business …
Back last summer I was explaining that it is not the penal code against prostitution which is the problem. It is these local ordinances, which apply no where else except in strip clubs and which are completely unconstitutional, and the civil actions which are the problem.
I've explained that what they have talked about of evidence is not even admissible, in a criminal trial, and that the punishment for entrapment is to have the evidence thrown out, of a criminal trial.
But where is this criminal trial, where are the defendants and where is the jury? They are talking about prostitution and using this to try and close the place, but if there is prostitution, then why aren't they actually enforcing the criminal codes against it?
They are trying to close a place for criminal activities, when they have yet to convict any criminals, and it is because they couldn't because they have no admissible evidence.
I think this is the one, the extended stay by hwy 385, that people have written about staying at.
There has been discussion of checking in only to find out that Take Out is already available on site. So it is not even necessary to go to PP, at least for the first round.
Someone wrote about one girl who did a session and then walked back to her room, wearing nothing except for maybe her stripper shoes. That might have been in another state, not sure. But you get the idea.
Thing is, this is also the place they recommend people stay at when they come to visit Bob Jones University. So how do they manage the situation? Do they assign one floor for the Platinum Plus people, and then one floor for the Bob Jones people?
Bob Jones University has got to be the anus of the entire country. It is the place which brought the Religious Right into politics. See, at Bob Jones they didn't seem to understand that the prohibition on racial discrimination in the 1964 Civil Rights Act also applied to them.
So they were still requiring that black students be married before being admitted. They were still prohibiting interracial dating. Anyone who violated this, or who advocated violating it, would be expelled.
Jimmy Carter had worked hard to eliminate the vestiges of Jim Crow in Georgia. He was not going to take this from Bob Jones University. So he was going to remove their tax exempt status, and retroactively back to 1964. The federal court approved this.
But at Bob Jones University they still were not going to heed. They maintained their discriminatory policy. People who donated money to them could not take a tax deduction. This continued through out the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years. Then in 2000 when G. H. W. Bush kicked off his campaign with a visit to Bob Jones, there was such a public outcry that Bob Jones University finally capitulated.
Randall Balmer goes into how this was why the Religious Right dumped Jimmy Carter in favor of a Hollywood Playboy Divorcee. It is also why this is still the only industrialized country without universal health care.
So at the Greenville Extended Stay, how do they keep the Platinum Plus people separated from the Bob Jones people? Do they need to? Is it possible that sometimes they are actually the same people?
Is it possible that Shadowcat has been fooling us, and that when he goes to Greenville it is because he teaches at Bob Jones, maybe as a guest lecturer?
The prosecution recently claimed they have dancers who have witnessed these lewd acts and are willing to testify. They are probably copping a plea so they don't get busted for income tax evasion mentioned earlier in this thread. This totally sucks for those of us who called PP our home club.
^ if that's the case then they really want that place closed. When they are going after them this vigorously I tend to think it may be about $$$ and wanting to get their hands on the land the club sits on.
If they spent a million or more, you can bet they have a plan to recoup that money.
I think that sucks. I think karma will one day strike back against all those in support of this.
There used to be a nightclub where Platinum used to be at that I think they shut down because it was a nuisance. Apparently if people call police because there isn't enough security to deter crime in the parking lot, clubs get shut down as a nuisance.
Prostitution consists of making a deal, a contract. Usually there are only two parties within ear shot of this. And if one of those two is a cop, it better not have originated with them.
So as far as these witness dancers, that is interesting, but it is probably not enough to convict anyone.
Problem is though that they are trying to close the club on the premise that crimes are being committed, but without actually having convicted anyone of such crimes.
So what blows my mind is how they spent something like 10k at the Strip club. Wonder how they selected the officers for that. Volunteers? Lottery?
What also blows my mind is that the average customer spends something like $37 dollars A visit. What the hell does that buy you besides cover, a beer and something from the vending machine.
also wonder what that means for the entrapment argument since the story makes it out as though the officers came in and spent an inordinate amount of money creating and artificial scenario to trick the girls into solicitation. Wonder also if any of the officers partook.
On my last visit to PP Columbia last week I saw a few big spenders and two champagne room purchases. It makes me wonder if the same thing is about to go down Here
I stopped by there the other night out of curiosity. I doubt I will do that again if this question still lingers. I left after less than 45 minutes I think. The club is still charging $10 cover after midnight. Forget that. I heard rumors that the club was closing earlier but I wouldn't know because I didn't stay very long. The number of dancers and customers working and visiting here seems to be steadily dropping as well.
Most people visiting here probably do not buy lap dances. They may only spend $8 cover plus maybe one or two beers, maybe $18, then there are all the people buying lap dances which if they average $60 per visit but are a smaller percentage of the customers, the $37 average makes sense. That just means you know over 98% of customers aren't getting any special treatment unless dancers are doing things for free in violation of the law and with bouncers watching. I didn't think strippers were that stupid or that much in love with a customer. Then that just leaves the high rolling undercover agents and whatever they can entrap someone with while spending thousands.
As far as the $37, I suspect that that is the bar tab, what gets reported to the IRS. As far as the other money, it is of course supposed to be reported, but who knows how much it actually is.
I'm not supporting LE here, I believe their actions are completely wrong.
I'm still wondering, why do people like these PP clubs so much. What does their management know that the others don't?
I like them because dance prices are negotiable. If you get a few favorites, you can get two for one specials anytime. At another club I have to wait for the announced time. In 2 hours at club Lust, I do not want to spend $25 per dance. It seems like a rip off. I'll wait until virtually all the dancers are busy at the announced time and only get dances from one dancer during the announced time in a crowded lap dance room. That means at most I got dances from only 2 dancers in about 2 hours, and that's if the dancer I wanted wasn't dancing for someone else. Over at Platinum, it used to be, spot a favorite, go get dances anytime at the two for one price. In one hour, I could get over half a dozen dances or more. I spent a lot more but enjoyed it more. No waiting around for an announced two for one deal.
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As a resident of this area, where did this money come from? $15-30 grand to investigate s strip club? Very fishy. I agree with some others that the someone stopped getting their cut and they are responding by this.
IRONCAT:
Inside scoop on Platinum Plus in Greenville
Last Comment: April 4, 2015
April 2, 2015 • Well, I finally got some inside information on PP in Greenville, although, it wasn't easy - my contacts were pretty tight lipped on the topic. What I have heard is that this is more of an internal investigation of some deputies who were providing tip-offs to PP management when the vice guys were getting ready to investigate. Apparently a bunch of deputies were fired. That is all I can get so far.
Maybe they wanted to prepare to become secret service agents and trips to brothels in South America or something.
I wonder what justifies spending all this tax payer money when 99 percent of the public never spends this kind of money? Only the truly wealthy would ever do something like that. The one percent are so wealthy they can pick up girls left and right without even visiting strip clubs. Just look at Hugh Heffner at the playboy mansion.
I could understand suing the club just to get the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent back. Sounds like a good scheme to use against any business. The best crooks and sneaky people work for the government. Just 3 agents spending 6K a week for a year is about 24K a month for 12 months or about half a million in one year. If they had more maybe they spent a million working on a case against the club. This is big money.
I think I could go out with a ton of girls at a regular bar for 1K to 2K per visit. wow.
Usually the penalty for entrapment is just that the evidence can't be used.
This is where the news media become very important, how they portray this, and how they go after the cops.
The idea that this is an internal investigation of their own people who might be on the take, is a good one. It might be possible. That as reason to pull out all the stops.
But this genitals to face matter, if that is all they have, that ain't much. And again, what did the cop do to instigate that?
SJG
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Greenv…
In most states
http://livingwithyourplane.com/
Bob Jones University, Yipes!
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Platin…
Greenville Extended Stay
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.850848,-…
People seem to like these Platinum Plus clubs. Not sure what their people would know that other operators don't. Might it just be that they hire more girls, so that they are competing harder against each other, and therefore they wouldn't likely be following the boss's rules.
I wasn't clear when I posted a while back, explaining that it is very hard for LE to make a clean bust if the girls are not openly soliciting. This was an extremely unclean bust.
SJG
VICE SQUAD AT WORK!
|| By FITSNEWS || Crusading moralists in the socially conservative South Carolina Upstate are trying to shut down a strip club for being a “public nuisance” – stepping up their attacks against a facility they’ve repeatedly raided in recent weeks.
The charge – led by local solicitor Walt Wilkins – aims to shut down the Platinum Plus strip club in Greenville, S.C., a facility undercover that’s received tens of thousands of dollars from undercover police officers as part of an ongoing “investigation.”
“We have asked the judge to shut them down pending a merits trial and that’s what we’re waiting for the judge to rule on,” Wilkins said last week, according to WLOS TV 13 (Asheville, N.C.).
According to Wilkins, strippers at the club are engaging in prostitution – and performing sex acts on customers (and fellow strippers) inside the club.
Our answer to that? So what …
As we’ve said repeatedly, prostitution should be decriminalized in South Carolina (and all over the country). Especially in a state as dirt poor as the Palmetto State.
But even under current law, how does one prostitution bust over the club’s fourteen-year history constitute a “public nuisance?”
Ridiculous …
We’ve got little use for politicians like Wilkins – nephew of former U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins. He’s a panderer who believes he has the right to sit in judgment of those who choose to spend their time and money on leisure activities he believes are immoral.
So he’s trying to put the company fulfilling those needs out of business …
***
Read more at http://www.fitsnews.com/2015/04/28/sc-go…
I've explained that what they have talked about of evidence is not even admissible, in a criminal trial, and that the punishment for entrapment is to have the evidence thrown out, of a criminal trial.
But where is this criminal trial, where are the defendants and where is the jury? They are talking about prostitution and using this to try and close the place, but if there is prostitution, then why aren't they actually enforcing the criminal codes against it?
They are trying to close a place for criminal activities, when they have yet to convict any criminals, and it is because they couldn't because they have no admissible evidence.
I think this is the one, the extended stay by hwy 385, that people have written about staying at.
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.850848,-…
There has been discussion of checking in only to find out that Take Out is already available on site. So it is not even necessary to go to PP, at least for the first round.
Someone wrote about one girl who did a session and then walked back to her room, wearing nothing except for maybe her stripper shoes. That might have been in another state, not sure. But you get the idea.
Thing is, this is also the place they recommend people stay at when they come to visit Bob Jones University. So how do they manage the situation? Do they assign one floor for the Platinum Plus people, and then one floor for the Bob Jones people?
Bob Jones University has got to be the anus of the entire country. It is the place which brought the Religious Right into politics. See, at Bob Jones they didn't seem to understand that the prohibition on racial discrimination in the 1964 Civil Rights Act also applied to them.
So they were still requiring that black students be married before being admitted. They were still prohibiting interracial dating. Anyone who violated this, or who advocated violating it, would be expelled.
Jimmy Carter had worked hard to eliminate the vestiges of Jim Crow in Georgia. He was not going to take this from Bob Jones University. So he was going to remove their tax exempt status, and retroactively back to 1964. The federal court approved this.
But at Bob Jones University they still were not going to heed. They maintained their discriminatory policy. People who donated money to them could not take a tax deduction. This continued through out the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years. Then in 2000 when G. H. W. Bush kicked off his campaign with a visit to Bob Jones, there was such a public outcry that Bob Jones University finally capitulated.
Randall Balmer goes into how this was why the Religious Right dumped Jimmy Carter in favor of a Hollywood Playboy Divorcee. It is also why this is still the only industrialized country without universal health care.
True Origins of the Religious Right, Randall Balmer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gf4jN1x…
Balmer had grown up in the Evangelical Movement and he went on to make an award winning expose of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Bal…
Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000HLDDBK
So at the Greenville Extended Stay, how do they keep the Platinum Plus people separated from the Bob Jones people? Do they need to? Is it possible that sometimes they are actually the same people?
Is it possible that Shadowcat has been fooling us, and that when he goes to Greenville it is because he teaches at Bob Jones, maybe as a guest lecturer?
SJG
Stones Chicago 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRDaguRU…
I think that sucks. I think karma will one day strike back against all those in support of this.
There used to be a nightclub where Platinum used to be at that I think they shut down because it was a nuisance. Apparently if people call police because there isn't enough security to deter crime in the parking lot, clubs get shut down as a nuisance.
So as far as these witness dancers, that is interesting, but it is probably not enough to convict anyone.
Problem is though that they are trying to close the club on the premise that crimes are being committed, but without actually having convicted anyone of such crimes.
SJG
Article include affidavit I believe
What also blows my mind is that the average customer spends something like $37 dollars A visit. What the hell does that buy you besides cover, a beer and something from the vending machine.
also wonder what that means for the entrapment argument since the story makes it out as though the officers came in and spent an inordinate amount of money creating and artificial scenario to trick the girls into solicitation. Wonder also if any of the officers partook.
On my last visit to PP Columbia last week I saw a few big spenders and two champagne room purchases. It makes me wonder if the same thing is about to go down Here
I'm not supporting LE here, I believe their actions are completely wrong.
I'm still wondering, why do people like these PP clubs so much. What does their management know that the others don't?
SJG