How a Gang of Strippers Robbed From the Rich

By drugging them, says suspect Rosie Keo
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 3, 2016 4:05 PM CST
How a Gang of Strippers Robbed From the Rich
Samantha Barbash, center, has pleaded guilty to charges related to the stripper scam.   (AP Photo/DEA)

Rosie Keo is due in court next month for her alleged involvement in a scam involving strippers who robbed male clients of at least $200,000. But in her telling, Keo alone made much more. Makes sense, if her story is true about strippers drugging doctors and Wall Street executives to max out their credit cards. As she tells New York, it began when dancers felt they were being underpaid for their performances. So they wined and dined wealthy clients—often married men who treated them poorly—spiked their drinks with ketamine and MDMA, and took them to strip clubs like Scores in Manhattan and the Roadhouse in Queens. In one case, they ran up a $135,000 bill; in another, they drained the bank account of the father of an autistic boy whose wife had left him and whose house had been destroyed by a hurricane.

"It sounds so bad to say that we were, like, drugging people. But it was, like, normal," says Keo, who'd spend $1,000 on a pair of shoes and boasts of owning a private jet. "They all walked in ready to party. And yeah, we slipped them extra [drugs] that they didn't know about. But all of it goes hand in hand—sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. You know?" When clients called to complain, a stripper would say he'd been tipping everyone in sight. Keo says most men didn't go to the police for fear their wives or bosses would find out. But then, in a recorded phone conversation played for DEA agents, a stripper admitted to a client that he'd been drugged. Three women have since pleaded guilty to conspiracy, assault, and grand larceny and face sentencing. Yet Keo later denied telling New York any of this: "I am saving myself," she says. "I am out for myself." Click to read New York's full story. (More stripper stories.)

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