Top executives of a company that owns strip clubs across the United States sent a New York state auditor on at least 13 free trips to Florida, lavishing him with lap dances in Miami in an effort to avoid paying millions in taxes, according to the New York attorney general’s office.
The chief executive of publicly traded RCI Hospitality Holdings, its chief financial officer and three colleagues provided the trips to clubs, hotels and restaurants in Florida and New York to bribe the official of the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, prosecutors said in an indictment unsealed Tuesday.
Their scheme was laid out in text messages and emails, according to the charges. In exchange for the favors, RCI settled audits for less than it owed, in total avoiding $8 million in taxes, according to the indictment.
The executives “shamelessly used their strip clubs to bribe their way out of paying millions of dollars in taxes,” the attorney general, Letitia James, said in a statement.
The 66-page indictment, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, charged six men — five executives and the auditor — and three RCI-owned strip clubs in Manhattan with 79 crimes between 2010 and 2024. The clubs are Hoops Cabaret and Sports Bar, Rick’s Cabaret NYC and the Vivid Cabaret.
Over the years, the indictment said, the executives falsified business records to conceal the bribes, recording cash payments to the auditor as promotional expenses for the clubs.
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The post Strip Club Executives Bribed Tax Auditor With Lap Dances, Charges Say appeared first on New York Times.
