SALON

Wednesday, Jun 27, 2012 1:15 AM UTC

Accused NYC madam free on bond; jailed 4 months

By

Topics: From the Wires,

NEW YORK (AP) — A suburban mother charged with moonlighting as a big-city escort madam was released from jail on bond Tuesday, after four months behind bars in a case laced with claims of prominent clients and law-enforcement protectors.

Anna Gristina walked out of a Manhattan courthouse Tuesday night, free for the first time since her February arrest, albeit wearing an ankle bracelet. Earlier in the day, a judge signed off on arrangements for her $250,000 bond package.

“We are delighted to see Anna reunited with her family,” her lawyer, Norman Pattis, said in an email.

Gristina’s husband and her 9-year-old son were at the courthouse to greet her, the son with a bouquet of flowers.

The Scotland-born Gristina, 44, is a mother of four who tends to rescued pigs at her home in Monroe, N.Y. But prosecutors say she also was the madam of an upscale sex service for 15 years, making millions of dollars and boasting that she had contacts in law enforcement who could tip her off if she was about to get busted.

Gristina has said she was merely starting a matchmaking service, not peddling prostitutes. She has pleaded not guilty to promoting prostitution, a low-level felony punishable by up to seven years in prison.

Gristina was arrested on Feb. 22 as she left a fundraising meeting at a friend’s Morgan Stanley office, where she’d been trying to raise money for her business, prosecutors say.

Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan initially ordered her jailed on $2 million bond and declined requests to reduce it. But an appeals court called the amount “unreasonable and an abuse of discretion” and lowered it to $250,000 on June 12.

Gristina’s supporters have spent the ensuing weeks trying to put together the money, particularly after she decided to decline an offer from one of her former lawyers who was willing to put up his Manhattan loft apartment as collateral.

Bail bondsman Ira Judelson said members of Gristina’s family put up property for her bond. He and Pattis declined to give specifics.

By law, prosecutors sometimes can review bail arrangements and raise objections if they think the money isn’t legitimate. In Gristina’s case, the DA’s office didn’t object, and Merchan OK’d the plan.

“She wants to get home to her 9-year-old,”Judelson said Tuesday evening before Gristina was released. The boy was recently diagnosed with a heart murmur, according to court papers Gristina’s lawyer filed earlier this month to press her case for lower bail.

A woman accused of helping Gristina run the alleged escort service, two alleged prostitutes and an accused money-launderer also have been arrested in the case.

___

Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

More Jennifer Peltz.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations