Investigators Send Letters To Orlando Weekly About Adult Ads

Orange County vice investigators want the Orlando Weekly to cancel ads they say are really fronts for prostitution. Investigators with the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation say they've sent several letters to the Orlando Weekly and its parent company about the criminal connections they found to certain adult ads.

Vice investigators in Orange County say that the advertising in the Orlando Weekly's adult services section is what keeps large prostitution rings in business and, where there's prostitution, there are drugs, guns, violence and HIV.

Local vice agents say prostitution is not a victimless crime. They say a typical prostitute that's HIV-positive could potentially infect more than 18,000 people a year and Orange County investigators have identified 85 HIV infected prostitutes over the last several years.

Agents say many of the johns go back to their unsuspecting families and loved ones and put them at risk and that's just one of the dangers.

"A lot of the money that these women make goes back into the drug trade, the gun trade," said Paul Zambouros, Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation.

The Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation, in a joint effort between the Orange County Sheriff's Office and the Orlando Police Department, sent letters to the publisher of the Orlando Weekly and its parent company, Times-Shamrock Communications Alternative Newsweekly Groups, documenting the prostitution arrests connected to some of the Orlando Weekly's advertisers and asking the publication to stop selling to escort services and massage services.

MBI estimates that the Orlando Weekly has made almost $2.5 million in profits over the last five years from the ads.

"I did speak to one of their general managers from there parent company and they basically told me they had no plans to make any changes to their policy," Zambouros said.

About ten years ago, the Orlando Weekly agreed, as had the Orlando Sentinel and the Yellow Pages, to stop selling the ads and vice agents said it really crippled the prostitution operations, but five years ago the Orlando Weekly started it up again.