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Topics relate to adult business, the War on Drugs, political prosecutions, censorship, and police, prosecutorial, and judicial misconduct

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Orlando MBI: The Long War on Adults


The War on anything adult and all publishers of ads for anything adult in the Orlando metro area started over 3 decades ago for Orlando's Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation (MBI) and continues today. The Orlando MBI's overzealous agents have left a trail of thousands of victims, many still in state and federal prisons. I was one of the lucky victims (lucky I'm not spending life in prison anyway) and Memoirs of an Accused Madam is my story.

The most vehement critic of the Orlando MBI was always the Orlando Weekly and the agency managed to silence the newspaper's investigative reporting with the October 2007 arrests of several advertising sales employees for selling ads to escorts and unlicensed massage therapists that offered more than the law allows.

Many around back in 1996 could testify to the fact that this was not a new strategy for the MBI, myself included. The War on publishers of ads for adult business began with the Yellow Pages Fiasco, discussed in Memoirs, in 1996, when Sprint Publishing was threatened with a RICO case over a refusal to remove the “escort services” category in the Central Florida yellow pages. Sprint did remove the category, stopping the presses (literally) on the 1997 directories printed and distributed by November of 1996.

Someone stated to me back in 1993-94 that Orlando was a testing ground of some sort in relation to the eradication of anything involving adult business or vice, from gambling and bingo to escort services and X-rated movies. I believe it. The MBI's War on Adults has spread throughout the US these days with the attacks on Craigslist (an MBI priority before anyone else ever touched it) and now on Backpage.


Enjoy Bingo?

The MBI would have liked to make sure that you would never enjoy bingo in Orlando; however, Philip Furtney of Ontario fought the agency from 1995, until he died in late 2007, while in-process of a civil suit against members of the MBI Governing Board to retrieve his stolen property. Furtney's brother Bruce, on behalf of the estate, carried-on with the suit and won a judgment. As far as I am aware, Furtney's estate finally collected from the State of Florida.

I would like to keep Philip Leroy Furtney's criminal and civil cases alive in our memories forever and do so with the inclusion of links to posts on this blog. Never forget what the MBI is capable of:

The Bingo Racketeering Case

The Great Bingo Fiasco

Most Bizarre Racketeering Case Ever


True Investigative Reporting of a Renegade Agency

Over the years, the Orlando Weekly and its investigative reporters were often nipping at the heels of the dogs at the MBI. Retaliation is hell and the Weekly and its employees paid dearly for placing the agency in the public eye. One day last week I did a search for MBI articles written by Weekly reporters and each link was dead. A fear of sorts gripped me at the discovery, a fear that all the solid online information concerning the vicious pursuits of the MBI was being deleted and removed. Whew! It didn't happen and a few days later the links were all working. One other thought I had was that perhaps the Weekly had commissioned a book – that would have been wonderful; it would become a bestseller overnight. (Idea for the Weekly to help make-up for lost revenue!)

To keep the information out there I have compiled a list of important Orlando Weekly stories about the MBI over the last 10 years. Whatever the Weekly did last week with the links has made it so that the articles are on a dark red background with dark blue text – if you highlight the text it is much easier to read. They are in no particular order and searching the Orlando Weekly for stories on the MBI revealed 135 results so these are my picks:


The Morality Police (scroll to view 2 images, 1 of the MBI director in 1989 and the other of Hitler's SA and both concerned over morality – scary stuff)





Score one for the MBI (about my federal civil suit being tossed with a twist at the end)

Something's Fishy (bad behavior of agents at a strip club)

Dirty Politics (on the Video Exposé takedown)





Legal Haze (smoke shop raids)

The links I have included reveal what the MBI really is, but there are many cases that even the Weekly was not aware of and many defendants that have suffered at the hands of the overzealous agents of the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation. Few appreciate this agency in Orlando – the citizens did not ask for this whacked task force to eliminate all that is adult in Orlando. I will leave it to you to figure out what monster enterprise did.

I have written about a variety of cases in Memoirs that are not in any Weekly articles. In the past couple of months I've discussed the Orlando federal conspiracy trial of the 11 defendants from Eastern Europe on this blog – this is indeed an MBI case. MBI is not a local agency. I am not clear on how the agency has changed since former Director William Lutz retired, though at the conclusion of Memoirs I did believe there had been a significant change. Well, I have changed my mind.

I consider it important to keep the information out there and perhaps if I had given away free copies of Memoirs a couple of years ago after it was published, the most recent case involving the Eastern European defendants would never have happened; maybe, just maybe, they would have passed on Orlando. If not for the arrests of the Weekly employees in late 2007, there would be many more articles of cases that are now buried by the MBI.

If you are an adult that likes to gamble, play bingo, visit smoke shops, rent X-rated movies, read X-rated books, get a massage with a happy ending, patronize strip clubs, or call escorts... well, Orlando is not the place to be. We live in a fantasy land for children here - think about it - Disney shut down Pleasure Island (the nightclub theme park) in late 2008, after 20 years, because of demands by visiting families. The MBI has not been dissolved yet, with emphasis on yet, and we can only hope that one day...

If you do not like me, realize that it is the MBI that made me the person that I am today. I like who I am, but if you don't, well, you should know that I used to be a nice, mild-mannered woman. More than a decade of continuous harassment, interference in my life, and a show trial that rivaled many in the Stalin era did it. Change can be a good thing. I learned to kick back.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Jason Itzler Disappears

I have written a few posts recently about Jason Itzler and occasionally I will look online at his current criminal case to see if there are any updates. I last looked a few weeks ago and there was a future court appearance date, but otherwise everything was the same: Itzler was still in jail and couldn't make bond.

Well, I just now looked as I was in New York WebCrims to see if there were any updates on the NY High Class prosecution (there are not). To my surprise, the major case against Jason Itzler totally disappeared. There are no cases showing at all under his name and trust me, there sure was before. My only posts on this blog concerning Itzler are:

Jason Itzler of NY Confidential Fame: Clown or Killer?
Too Many Enemies
More on Jason Itzler and Sumnicht's Death

Itzler was arrested on a list of major charges back on September 8 or 9 of 2011 - as in three months ago. I have been having an argument of sorts with one of his fans (not) on this blog and we all know the case existed. There are still news articles out there concerning his arrest and court appearances.

So what in the hell is going on with the guy and the case? Did he die in jail or is he being prepped/protected for his new career as a witness, namely in the Paul Bergrin case? If it involves being a witness, well, the guy has zero credibility so I cannot imagine what government prosecutors are thinking. He has always been rather close to a few news reporters, so I would think that it would be in the news if he died.

He is still showing on an inmate search for Riker's Island, for what that's worth. When I search WebCrims by the case number showing in NYC Dept. of Corrections, which states that Itzler is in the Manhattan Detention Complex (MDC), the result is "no cases found" - same as a name search.

Call me confused.

Edit 16 December 2011 @11:20am EST - Now the case shows in New York WebCrims. It also shows under "appearances" that Itzler was in court on 13 December 2011. Coincidence? I seriously doubt it.