Spitzer-gate: Kristin "Billie" Davis' Wicked Models escort site

Turns out there's an off-the-shelf Web design package to help you set up your own online whorehouse.

Published March 27, 2008 10:04PM (EDT)

Wicked Models via Internet Archive

Considering the reader response to my last jaunt into Eliot Spitzer's online hooker hangout, my first thought upon hearing about a new prostitution ring in the Spitzer case was, Hey, I wonder if their site's still up?

It's not. The site in question is that of Wicked Models, an alleged New York escort service that law-enforcement officials shut down this week. On Tuesday Kristin "Billie" Davis, Wicked's busty proprietor (also alleged), pleaded not guilty to money laundering and promoting prostitution.

Spitzer's reps have denied that he visited Wicked's women, but the New York Post cites officials who say otherwise. The Post notes: "A source said Davis personally serviced Spitzer."

Of course, what gets on the Internet doesn't easily get off. (Beat....) So it wasn't hard to call up the old Wicked Website from the Internet Archive.

You find, there, that Wicked was pretty much your standard $1,000-per-hour online bordello -- it goes for lots of gold text and Photoshop font effects, and carries on at great length about the time it puts into selecting girls, sounding at times like a vintner discussing grape varietals:

All of our companions are hand-picked for their beauty, intellegence (ironic sic) and demeanor. We have stunning supermodels, Ivy League Educated beauties and the sorority girl next door. We pride ourselves in qualiy (sic, irony again) and adhere to the strictest standards.

One innovation: The Wicked site had an online booking form. Say you're a socks-with-sex randy governor of a large Northeastern state and you're looking for a good time. At Wicked, you could set it up without an awkward phone call: After perusing the models, you enter in your first choice, your second choice, your personal details, and press Send. That's it! Like Amazon, but without the Proust.

When you've visited as many online whorehouses as I have these past weeks you begin to notice an unmistakable sameness to their operations. Like the food at take-out Indian or Chinese restaurants, the hooker Web sites all seem to have the same essential flavor.

Turns out there's a reason: There's a central Web site designer! A link at the bottom of Wicked's site points you to Escort-Tools.com, a Web design house that focuses exclusively on the hot field of hooker sites.

Escort Tools -- whose garish animated logo suggests plenty of necessary expertise -- offers "to design your site to your specifications, or you may select from several beautiful, ready-to-use websites."

Among other things, Escort Tools sets up credit card processing, discussion boards, e-mail newsletters, and databases. The cost? From $750 to $1,300 -- or about an hour's work for an "intellegent" lady.


By Farhad Manjoo

Farhad Manjoo is a Salon staff writer and the author of True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society.

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