9 arrested in raid at Boca brothel, police say
By Stephanie Slater
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
BOCA RATON — Nestled between a health-care business and water-heater company, a brothel did a thriving business for three years until police shut it down Monday.
A Tyco employee on his lunch break was one of five customers arrested by undercover officers who raided Dreamscape at 4421 N. Dixie Highway shortly after noon.
The raid was the result of an unprecedented 2 1/2 -year investigation, a combined effort by the state attorney's office, Internal Revenue Service, Boca Raton police and six other police agencies.
"Typically, law enforcement goes out and tries to arrest those who try and procure prostitutes and those prostitutes who try and procure their customers," Assistant State Attorney James Martz said. "In this case, law enforcement went the extra length to try and work up the criminal enterprise side of it, to try and obtain the profits that are gleaned from the activities."
Masked undercover agents arrested the owner, Nahir Romero, as she headed to the bank to deposit money.
Investigators seized more than $300,000 from Romero's business accounts, as well as a silver Lincoln Navigator owned by one of her employees.
Though body lotions and champagne bubble baths were offered for sale in the waiting area, investigators said Romero's money was made strictly through prostitution. Police say the brothel averaged 10 to 15 customers a day.
Workers at neighboring businesses said they saw provocatively dressed women carrying suitcases going in and out of the warehouse. They came to recognize some of the regular customers, which included businessmen who arrived in Porsches and Mercedes, a one-legged veteran and a nice-looking man in his 20s.
"It's a joke around here," said Novella Wingrove, a nurse case manager at Baron Health Care. "We'd say, 'Oh they're having a busy day next door.' "
Business never let up. Even after last year's hurricanes knocked out power, neighboring workers said they saw a generator outside with a hot-pink extension cord leading into the building.
Monday was apparently just as busy.
Inside the warehouse, an open appointment book on a desk in the office listed five customers between 9:40 a.m. and 12:40 p.m. with "Valerie," "Lisa" and "Angel." A sign reminded customers to ask about "free sessions." Four themed rooms — hot pink, lavender, baby blue and leopard print — showed signs of hasty departures. Bed sheets tangled on the floor, a stack of $20 bills on a table and an empty condom wrapper lay among massage tables, mirrors, radios, oils and lotions.
Romero, 35, of Coconut Creek made about $20,000 a month from the business, which she started in September 1999 in Margate and called Party Events Inc., investigators said. She later moved the company to Boca Raton, advertising as Dreamscape in newspapers and fliers at South Florida airports.
Some of her customers were tourists, police said.
Romero was charged with money laundering, deriving money from prostitution and operating a house of prostitution. Metro-Dade police arrested her on a prostitution charge in 1995, according to state records.
Three women were charged with prostitution. Police identified two of them as Tiziana Ortega, 31, of Hollywood and Monica Amparo Guerra, 37, of North Miami. They did not release the third woman's name.
The five men charged with prostitution Monday were: Charles Joseph Ruggiero, 33, of Boca Raton, a self-employed hair colorist; Richard Sweeney, 52, owner of Advanced Applicators, a contracting firm in suburban Boca Raton; Andrew D. Slater, 42, a substitute teacher from Greenwich, Conn.; David Allen Brown, 44, a Verizon Wireless telephone salesman from Portland, Ore.; and William Adam Jorgensen, 25, of Wellington, a database administrator for Tyco Fire and Security in Boca Raton.
A resident sparked the investigation by giving Boca Raton Police Chief Andrew Scott a copy of a Dreamscape advertisement.
"This is just the beginning of what Palm Beach is going to experience as far as a crackdown on prostitution, using these illegal fronts to house and to protect these individuals and the enterprises they are engaged in," Scott said. "Many of these types of brothels have extended tentacles into organized crime, narcotics trafficking and possibly violent crimes."
Police and the state attorney's office watched hundreds of clients go into Dreamscape during several weeks of surveillance, Capt. Rick Reuter said. To build their case, investigators also obtained search warrants for Romero's bank records and interviewed clients as they left the business.
Investigators said they were concerned with the potential health consequences to clients who frequented Dreamscape, as well as their loved ones.
"It stunk. It was dirty," Reuter said. "It's just amazing that people would go in and perform any type of act in there."
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reamscape in Boca busted