Lawsuit reveals details of a Greenville strip club investigation

Weeks after a search warrant led to 20 arrests, the details of a yearlong criminal investigation into a Greenville strip club have emerged in a civil lawsuit filed by 13th Circuit Solicitor Walt Wilkins.

The suit claims Platinum Plus is a public nuisance and seeks a permanent injunction to shutter the business. The lawsuit also seeks to close the club until the case goes to trial. Elephant Inc. and Frontage Road Associates, the entities responsible for owning and operating the club, are named as individual respondents.

A woman who answered the phone at the club Friday said management had no comment on the suit.

The lawsuit contends undercover Greenville County deputies since April 4, 2014, have been investigating reports of illegal prostitution at the club on Frontage Road that’s visible from Interstate 385.

Within the suit’s 100 pages, undercover agents describe seeing strippers lead men to the upstairs Champagne Room with promises they “would not leave sexually frustrated.”

Strippers were alleged in the suit to have performed sex acts on themselves and customers for money and to having been encouraged to do so by club incentives, including a contest for the stripper who could get the most Champagne Room dances. The winner got a private dressing room for a month.

The suit also contends underage strippers were given alcohol, while others were supplied with Adderall, a Schedule II stimulant, to “keep the strippers up all night long.”

During the course of the investigation, the suit says, undercover agents also described a pimp who used Platinum Plus as a “recruiting ground” to induce strippers to become prostitutes.

Sworn statements to law enforcement by hostesses, strippers and others are included as exhibits in the lawsuit. The statements allege managers knew strippers were having sex in the Champagne Room — that condoms were found in the booths — but management did nothing to stop the acts.

One stripper said in the lawsuit that the club never told her what she could or couldn’t do and that she started performing sex acts because “she wasn’t making any money and saw other girls doing it to make money.”

The suit then lays out how these acts were arranged, detailing the process as a business transaction in which customers would first pay $300 to buy a bottle of champagne, then negotiate with the strippers an amount of money for an hour of their time.

On March 27, the Sheriff’s Office executed an early-morning search warrant at the club after receiving numerous prostitution complaints, according to Master Deputy Jonathan Smith.

Smith at the time declined to comment further on the investigation.

Arrest warrants were issued later on more than 20 individuals, strippers and other Platinum Plus employees, the lawsuit says.

On the Sunday following the initial arrests, the suit contends club managers held a meeting during which they told attendees the Sheriff’s Office didn’t have a “big case because only three were arrested” and that “everything would get back to normal in a couple of weeks.”

Platinum Plus has four locations listed on its website — two in Columbia and one in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Authorities raided the Pennsylvania location in 2013 and arrested 11 employees on prostitution charges, local media outlets reported.

In Greenville, the club has been the site of at least two death investigations since 2010.

A Duncan man was charged with murder last year after authorities said he refused to pay for services rendered, got into a fight with security guards and shot one of them. That case is pending.

In May 2010, a man died of asphyxia after a Platinum Plus bouncer used a choke hold to remove him from the club.

The bouncer pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in 2011 and received probation.

This story was originally published April 17, 2015 at 11:29 PM with the headline "Lawsuit reveals details of a Greenville strip club investigation."