Readers, I recently got this letter from a sex worker I’ve known for years. Obviously I’m not in a position to know all the ins and outs of the situation, but this lady is very sharp and I talked to her about some of the earlier incidents she refers to as they happened, including the one from three years ago. I have edited this a bit for conciseness, to remove a few unnecessary personal details and to embed links, but the rest is hers. The “Gina” she refers to is the owner of Preferred 411 (“P411”), a client verification service to which I’ve referred on multiple occasions.

Dear Maggie,

I am writing this in hopes that you may help me to share this information regarding P411. I was reluctant to come forward at first, but after the evidence that presented itself today, I can no longer deny the responsibility that I have to my sisters to report that I strongly believe that the security of the site can no longer be trusted. I was the biggest proponent of P411 for years, but now sadly, I must say that Gina and I exchanged emails today that can leave me with no other impression than that she is working with cops, maybe even the FBI.

Three years ago a man claiming to be “Danny H___”* attempted to schedule appointments with me in Orlando, Florida, using a very memorable email address. I was provided with screening information that led to a Florida real estate license, so I made the appointment; however, my intuition kept telling me that something was wrong so I ran some checks on the contact form he filled out on my website. A back door tracker showed it originated at “Orange County Telecommunications”, and following that back took me to the police department website. I quickly cancelled the appointment, yet had already told him the hotel; he begged me to see him, and when I looked out the window I saw two blacked out undercover Dodge Chargers in the parking lot, parked driver to driver in the style of the police. So I told him that I found him attractive and would see him for free, and suddenly he lost interest. Hmm.

Early last week, I was surprised to be contacted by that same memorable email address again! I had just posted a new ad on Eros for the Tampa area (which includes Orlando). Because I knew he was a cop from last time, I decided to look at the MBI website and found a message from the Director breaking down their efforts to eliminate escort advertising from Orlando for tourism reasons. I spent hours reading it, and began tracking all of my communications. Imagine my further surprise when each of four different client contacts that day all tracked back to the same Orlando IP address as the cop’s email; in fact, each of the four clients forwarded all of my emails to the same four contacts in various locations of the country, all showing “human trafficking” task forces located in those cities.

I went into high alert mode, using P411 as my preferred source of screening, and that day I was contacted by two P411 members. I agreed to meet one of them, but had to redirect his conversation many times because he kept saying graphic things that would not occur in a tantric session. I never want to blow a client out of the water by shouting “There is no sex in my sessions”; I let them figure it out on their own and they are usually OK with it. But this guy wouldn’t let go of the sex talk prior to meeting. In fact, he got a little upset and said, “This is too much work. It sounds like you are just an escort, not Tantra with Sex.” I explained that I had to be careful due to Florida’s efforts to impose moral agendas by persecuting erotic education. And boy, did that email get a lot of attention; it was forwarded or opened 68 times on 5 different devices in 5 different cities. In fact, all of the contacts that week circulated my emails to the same network, including some in which the supposed client wanted me to cross a state line to see him (which is fishing for a Mann Act charge). I have detailed tracking reports on all of these emails, though none got quite as much attention as the one in which I mentioned that I was aware of current police operations.

Once I had verified that all of these suspect mails were coming from the same IP address as the P411 account, I contacted P411 immediately by phone; the operator (with zero sense of urgency) told me to email Gina. I had to do that twice before she replied, and her replies left me with no doubt that she is working with the cops. She claims that a P411 client forwarding our emails to known police IP addresses is not an issue because IP addresses are “garbage information”. I agree that without other information, they mean very little, but when the addresses are clearly part of a network and the same IP comes up again and again, it is undeniable that something in the milk ain’t clean. When I explained how I knew these addresses were associated with known cops, she categorically stated that the original client from three years ago was “with no doubt, NOT LE”. Following this oddly-certain declaration I decided to Google that memorable email address, and found multiple blacklist reports which also identified him as LE (in direct contradiction of Gina’s statement). When I confronted her with this evidence, her reply was, “Some people just live for drama and paranoia.”

This is not the first time I’ve suspected problems with P411. Prior to the Denver busts using fake P411 accounts last June I had emailed Gina about suspicious activity from a Denver account with zero OKs who forwarded my emails to Colorado State Government computers; this supposed newbie was trying to get me to travel from Florida to Colorado and to “bring a friend to Colorado because I like to watch”. Pretty odd for a newbie to reach out to Florida for something as easy to find as a duo, unless you’re trying to invent a “human trafficking” scenario. But this week, when I reminded Gina of that incident, she claimed the username I reported was not the one involved in the busts. There was one other incident last year: I checked my P411 account after a long absence and found that my phone number had been changed to someone else’s; searching the new number revealed a duplicate of my ad, complete with my photo and an apparently false review. Gina’s reaction to that issue was to say that I must have changed the phone number myself.

I didn’t speak out then because I could not believe that Gina, as well respected as she is, could really be in on this. I’m also aware that Gina and P411 reside in Canada, but with the current “sex trafficking” hysteria who knows what agreements may have been made between the two countries’ police agencies? And it’s not like there is no such thing as extradition for “crimes” that are now being represented as something very serious. Furthermore, I’m not the first provider to accuse Gina of being “dirty”, and several clients I know are concerned that she is preparing to “cash out” due to the fact that she was recently offering lifetime P411 memberships for the cost of two years (citing “bad business decisions” as her reason). Today I deleted my account. But I have a responsibility to stand up as an activist and say that these things are undeniable, and I have the evidence to prove it.

Months before the Denver incident, P411 was also compromised in Wisconsin and Little Rock, Arkansas; there was also evidence of a much more serious problem which I included in TW3 #43, but removed mere hours before publication time because Gina came up with a seemingly-credible explanation for it. But now, the circumstantial evidence appears to be stacking up; even if this can all be explained, it has not been as yet. Services like P411 run on trust, and Gina does not appear to be investing enough effort in maintaining that trust; until and unless she does, I would advise all escorts using the service to be wary and to run your own extensive screening on anyone who approaches you via P411.

*Mr. H____ has emailed me and insists that he had nothing to do with this sting operation; given that the police don’t care whom they hurt in their crusade against whores, it’s entirely possible they could simply be using his name without his permission.