Cornering the Vice Market

“If you give a hand job, charge for it. If you give a blow job, charge for it. If you don’t charge for it, then you’ll be fired.”

 

Norm Maleng was elected King County prosecutor in 1978. But it wasn’t until July 2005 that he first charged Frank Colacurcio with a felony. The seven-term prosecutor said he was of course familiar with the man who, for sixty-two years—dating back to when Maleng was three years old—had been striving to become Seattle’s modest version of an organized criminal. But “No, never had the opportunity,” Maleng said as he strolled down his office hallway in the King County Courthouse after a press conference. He had just charged Colacurcio and three others in the Strippergate case with nine criminal counts that included conspiracy. “It was always federal,” Maleng said of Frank’s legal troubles. “Remember, it was back in the fifties and sixties, I think, the early seventies, and it was federal, and if memory serves me, it was mostly income tax.” This time, it was “political money laundering,” in Maleng’s words, the $39,000 that turned up in a two-year city and state investigation, secretly doled out by Colacurcio, his family, and his friends to the reelection campaigns of the three Seattle City Council members.

By then Frank had been to prison for criminal racketeering, tax skimming, probation violations, and of course the forties’ carnal-knowledge conviction. One of Maleng’s predecessors did the state prosecutorial honors then. After that, Colacurcio moved on to the big time, U.S. District Court, up the hill. Maleng says that Colacurcio’s history did not play into the latest charges. “But,” he said, stopping in the hallway, “everybody brings to the table what they have done, if you know what I mean.”

With this sort of experience, the graying, stocky Frank knew when to pipe up or down. At his nice home with the pool at the north end of Lake Washington, he was answering a reporter’s phone call but saying little about the charges. “Thing is, until this thing is over, I can’t talk about it,” said Frank, who was recovering from a minor surgery. Likewise mum was Frankie, who was charged in the conspiracy along with two of Frank’s employees and friends, Gil Conte and office manager Marsha Furfaro, wife of Nick Furfaro, Frank’s aging friend barred from running his club on Aurora Avenue. “Really, you have to talk to my attorney,” Frank said pleasantly.

Maleng was confidant he had the evidence to convict Frank and friends, issuing nineteen pages of charges and supporting documents. They outlined an extensive probe into bank transactions and Frank’s own business records, forming a long money trail. In legalese, the defendants were charged with conspiracy to offer a false instrument for filing or record, and knowingly procuring others to do the same. Tim Burgess, a former cop and onetime city ethics commissioner later elected to the City Council, called the Colacurcio business “a criminal enterprise that has been operating in our region for decades.” Though the city’s civil elections probe had hit a dead end, the prosecutor was able to bring criminal charges in large part by granting immunity to some of those involved, he said. That may have at least for the moment caused a stir in the Colacurcio family and divided the Furfaro family. Marsha Furfaro’s daughters had told investigators they were reimbursed for their contributions by their mother, who of course worked out of Frank’s Talents West office. Marsha Furfaro was already on record calling the funds a “bonus” from Frank and Frankie.

Once again, in on the picture—but almost out of focus, as usual—was ex-governor Al Rosellini. Despite his major rainmaking role in helping distribute Frank’s money, he was not charged. “There is no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing” by Al, said Maleng. Others who may have donated political cash provided by Frank included John Rosellini, Al’s son. Maleng wouldn’t say what he thought Al Rosellini’s real role was in Strippergate. It turned out that the ex-governor had passed out thousands in disguised Colacurcio funds and had witnessed—if not orchestrated—one of the cash handoffs, with Frank at his side. That exchange unfolded at the Emerald Queen, a onetime paddle-wheel boat turned into a floating casino by the Puyallup Tribe, anchored at the Port of Tacoma. Al and Frank were joined by a third man, longtime Tacoma civic and sports figure Stan Naccarato. They passed around money that Naccarato would later contribute to City Council races in a city where he didn’t live.

But then the attorneys went to work on the charges, and in 2006 King County Superior Court Judge Michael Fox said prosecutors had misread the law: the state Public Disclosure Act did not allow for criminal charges. Frank, Al, and Stan were off the hook.

The money thing seemingly behind them, Frank and Frankie showed up one day in the summer of 2006 at Sugar’s nudie club in Shoreline, full of themselves. They could go break the law all over the place now. They sat down in a room with the dancers crowded around them. Sex Economics 101 for strippers was under way. Object of the class: finesse more cash from consumers.

Sugar’s was the least revenue producing of Frank’s four clubs. It was smaller, older, and didn’t quite have the hand-job reputation needed to draw a crowd. In 2006 it was bringing in just $37,000 a month, while Rick’s in nearby Lake City was producing almost ten times that. The girls needed a lesson in Colacurcio capitalism.

As one of the club’s dancers would later tell investigators, white-haired Frank, born in the midst of World War I, got up and, best as she could recall, told the gathering of young women: “If you give a hand job, charge for it. If you give a blow job, charge for it. If you don’t charge for it, then you’ll be fired.” Then dapper Frankie, a child of the swingin’ sixties, rose and repeated his father’s time-tested mantra: Give free sex at your peril.

The cops and feds got a good chuckle when they heard of the Two Franks show. But they were still serious about following the money. As an investigator reported around that time, Conte was continuing his money runs to and from the apartment, the office, and the bank. “Conte exited the car carrying a handful of cash,” the investigator said. “A few minutes later, he exited the bank and drove directly to Talents West.” It was tedious, repetitious. And investigators watched almost every moment of it, their probe now having stretched from 2004 into 2007.

Something big was cooking. But Frank was distracted. By a six-to-three vote, the Washington Supreme Court reinstated the Strippergate charges. Justice Barbara Madsen said the law, which “helps to ensure the integrity of government by preventing disproportionate or controlling influence by financially strong groups,” neither expressly allows nor explicitly bars criminal prosecution. So the case could continue.

The law had caught up with Frank yet again. So had a lesser-known part of his past.