People v. Lauria

Facts

The defendant owned an answering service business. Officers were investigation call-girl activity, and focused their attention on three prostitutes actively using the defendant’s telephone answering services, presumably for business purposes.

An undercover cop signed up for the telephone service. She spoke to an employee and hinted broadly that she was a prostitutes concerned with the secrecy of her activities and their concealment from the police. She was told that the operation was discreet and “about as safe as you can get.” Later, the cop spoke to the defendant directly and told him that her business was modelling and she had been referred to the service by Terry, one of the three prostitutes under investigation. She complained that because of the operation of the service she had lost two customers. The defendant defended his service and said that her friends had probably lied to her about having left calls for her. But he did not respond to Mrs. Weeks’ hints that she needed customers in order to make money.

A few weeks later, the three prostitutes and the defendant were arrested. The defendant stated that other answering services had 60 to 70 prostitutes on its board while his own had only 9 or 10, and that he kept separate records for known or suspected prostitutes for the police. However, his service did not tell the police about the activity as long as the prostitutes paid their bills. He admitted that he knew that some of his customers were prostitutes, including Terry.

The defendant was indicted for conspiracy to commit prostitution. However, the trial court set aside the indictment. The People appealed, and they are now in the Court of Appeals.