Paid sex, then threats bring ID debate
Woman charged; man yet unnamed
He was a prominent businessman from the Boston area, married and in his 60s, who later told authorities that he had merely wanted a "last hurrah" - sex with a young woman.
She was a 27-year-old prostitute from Canton who was happy to oblige, providing sex for cash through an "escort service" he found in the Yellow Pages, according to federal authorities. One encounter led to another, and then another, and so it went for 18 months.
Then last July, shortly after the liaisons ended, the FBI said she called the businessman with a startling threat: Someone had offered her $60,000 to publicly reveal their relationship. If the businessman wanted her to keep her mouth shut, it would cost him more than that.
The businessman quickly handed her $80,000 in cash outside a Newton hotel, and, when she said that was not enough, another $200,000 outside a Costco in Dedham, an FBI agent said in an affidavit. But when she demanded $300,000 more - "that money I ask for is nothing to u," she allegedly said in a text message - the businessman contacted a high-priced lawyer with considerable influence in the federal justice system in Massachusetts: former US attorney Donald K. Stern.
What followed, say several legal specialists, illustrates how a prosperous individual with high-level connections can marshal the formidable resources of federal law enforcement to turn the tables on a criminal and preserve his good name - even if he himself had repeatedly broken the law by paying for sex. In contrast, the alleged prostitute's name is all over court records.
"Why should he be given any type of preferential treatment?" said Bernard Grossberg, one of several Boston criminal defense lawyers critical of the deference shown the businessman. "I'm sure there are many other victims who don't want their names publicized. And paying for sex is a crime in Massachusetts."
Other veteran criminal lawyers said, however, that the prosecutors' studious efforts to keep the businessman's identity secret were justified because the government wants to encourage other people to come forward if they are victims of similar extortion schemes.
"They've done a balancing act here," said Frank A. Libby Jr., of Boston, a defense attorney and former federal prosecutor. "And society's interest in removing the market for extortion has been viewed as far more important and significant than the everyday concerns about prostitution."
The wheels were set in motion on Aug. 7, two days after the demand for $300,000, when Stern arranged for an FBI agent and a prosecutor who works for US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, the top federal law enforcement official in the state, to meet with the businessman at Stern's office on the 46th floor of the Prudential Tower.
Although federal authorities rarely pursue cases of blackmail involving prostitutes and customers, the FBI arranged to have the businessman tape-record a series of phone calls to the prostitute, including one from Providence, according to the affidavit. That call crossed state lines, ensuring that the prostitute's alleged extortion demand was a federal crime, a tactic that several former federal prosecutors said is a common practice.
Federal agents arrested the startled woman, Michelle Robinson, on Aug. 13 in a Costco parking lot after the businessman gave her a bag she thought contained $300,000.
This week the last chapter of the sordid story will probably be written when Robinson, now 29, pleads guilty in court to wire fraud and threats in interstate communications and accepts what is by all accounts a remarkably lenient, if unusual, sentence.
Under a tentative deal between federal prosecutors and Robinson's lawyer that must be approved by a judge, she would be sentenced Friday to six months in jail - the time she has already spent locked up since her arrest - and be immediately freed. That is far less than the 27 to 33 months recommended in federal sentencing guidelines for such a crime, said several former prosecutors.
Robinson would have to pay back the $280,000 - which might be a challenge given that she was declared indigent by the court - and serve six months in home confinement.
And she will also spend three years on supervised release, during which she must obey an extraordinary condition: She is forbidden from disclosing the businessman's name.
Neither prosecutors nor the FBI have named the businessman, and a federal judge recently rejected a legal challenge by the Globe seeking to release it. The judge sided with Stern and prosecutors, both of whom argued strenuously that public exposure would only accomplish what the prostitute had threatened to do.
Court documents identify the victim alternately as LB, for local businessman, and BP, for business person.
"BP's anonymity does not prevent the public from access to the criminal proceedings in this case," Stern wrote in a memorandum opposing disclosure of the name. "Rather, it strikes a balance between his right to privacy and the public's right to act as a check on the criminal justice system."
With the exception of rape and sexual assault victims, federal and state law enforcement officials routinely identify victims of crime, in part so people can assess the credibility of accusations. Even in rape cases, the names of victims become public if cases go to trial, although news outlets typically opt not to report them to avoid stigmatizing the complainants.
But the extortion case will not go to trial with Robinson's guilty plea, and Stern and his former colleagues in the US attorney's office have cited the federal Crime Victims' Rights Act of 2004 to justify keeping the man's name a secret. The law says victims have the right "to be treated with fairness and respect for [their] dignity and privacy," although it does not specify that their names must be kept secret.
Stern and prosecutors invoked the law even though the man is not purely a victim and even though some city police departments, in a crackdown on prostitution, have gone so far as to shame customers by posting their names in newspapers and on the Web, billboards, and television.
Several criminal lawyers not involved in the case have criticized the secrecy.
James L. Sultan, a Boston defense lawyer, called the case "an example of the system working better for people who have resources." It is also, he said, an unfortunate result of what can happen when the courts and media identify every adult who is arrested without regard to their reputations but withholds the identity of some complainants because of such concerns, he said.
"It really is a slippery slope," said Sultan, who says all defendants and accusers should be identified, or none of them. "Who gets to be the anonymity police?"
Stern, Sullivan's office, and Robinson's lawyer, Mark D. Smith, all declined to comment on the case.
The businessman began paying the prostitute for sex, a misdemeanor under state law, around January 2007, Nancy L. McCormick, an FBI agent, testified at a US District Court hearing a week after Robinson's arrest. Robinson told the businessman her name was Victoria Gonzales, and they met at hotels in Cambridge and Dedham.
The relationship ended in June 2008, said the agent. Around July 23, Robinson called the businessman to say that an unidentified man had offered her $60,000 to publicly expose the relationship. She sometimes referred to the man as a government official and other times as a reporter, said the agent.
Within hours, the businessman withdrew $80,000 and handed the cash over to Robinson in the parking lot of the Marriott Hotel in Newton, the agent said. The following day, she demanded more money, and the businessman, accompanied by his financial adviser, paid her the additional $200,000.
But after she sent him a text message on her cellular phone around Aug. 5 demanding $300,000 more, the businessman sent a reply: "This is clearly a case of extortion, and your attitude and actions give me no confidence that this extortion process will not continue indefinitely."
The businessman went to Stern, and the two met with federal authorities, who arranged for the businessman to call Robinson to have her repeat her demands on tape.
"You understand the pain and suffering this has caused me?" the businessman said in one call.
"Yeah, I do," Robinson is heard saying.
"If I don't come up with this additional 300, then you're going to . . . blow my cover, is that what you're saying?" he said.
She replied, "I mean, that's how you put it."
At least one other prostitution client ensnared in a recent federal investigation, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, also avoided being identified in court papers. A federal affidavit referred to him only as "Client 9," but federal officials later confirmed that the individual was Spitzer, leading to his March 2008 resignation.
In the Boston federal extortion case, Sultan said, the secrecy given the businessman reflects the inconsistent approach of a legal system that protects some individuals who bring criminal complaints but shows no such deference to defendants.
"It's troubling because it forces someone, whether it's the court or the media itself, to decide which complainants are worthy of having their identity protected and which are not," he said.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com 
