How does one go from being a three-time American Olympian to a Las Vegas escort?
For Suzy Favor Hamilton, it was an exclusive, secretive escort service that helped connect her with clients who paid up to $600 for her services.
Hamilton competed in middle-distance running at the Games in 1992, 1996, and 2000 but never scored a medal. On Thursday, she confessed to her past as a paid escort in a series of tweets after having been outed by the website The Smoking Gun.
“I do not expect people to understand,” Hamilton tweeted. “But the reasons for doing this made sense to me at the time and were very much related to depression.”
That’s a different story than the one told on the the escort bio page of “Kelly,” the alias Hamilton admitted to using.
“I [began working as an escort] with the idea of fulfilling a fantasy and only doing it for the short term. Well, after my first date, I was hooked, and have been doing my best to visit Las Vegas as often as my schedule allows (I run my own business in my real world life).” Hamilton runs a real-estate brokerage firm in the suburbs of Madison, Wisconsin, where she lives with her husband and daughter. According to her post, she began working as an escort in December 2011.
But while a great deal is now known about Hamilton—there are scandalous photos circulating—one has to peek behind members-only websites to glean anything about Haley Heston Private Collection, the service Hamilton admitted working for.A look at how Haley Heston operates offers a glimpse of how escort services function and avoid legal trouble as they operate across state lines.
Haley Heston Private Collection is a strictly cash-only business—The Smoking Gun reports that Hamilton’s services cost about $600 an hour or $6,000 for the day. Prices are not listed on the service’s website, which is closed to the public except for a section explaining how to become a member. “We’re happy you chose to explore with us further!” the site reads before directing potential johns to verification services and reference requests from employers or other escort services. “Our promise to you is that we will be whom we say we are, that our ladies are genuine, that the pictures are real, and that we will not stand you up,” the site assures its customers. But finding out who is behind Haley Heston is a trickier task that hiring one of the firm’s escorts—and that’s exactly the point. Several numbers posted on The Erotic Review, an escort review site, with Las Vegas area codes for Haley Heston were either non-working numbers or took the caller directly to an automated voice message system. Messages left at several numbers were not returned. Other Las Vegas-based escort services answered the phone with a sultry “Hello?” but after it became clear we weren’t looking for a date they would not connect The Daily Beast to any staff member who could tell us about Haley Heston or how their own service worked. The service’s Twitter page, @HHPCollection, was taken down as of Friday, but cached tweets hint at how the service advertised its escorts to its 138 followers. “We are the premier Boutique Escort Agency of Las Vegas,” the Twitter page reads, “for a date you won’t soon forget, some of the hottest, coolest, sexiest girls in the city =)”. @HHPCollection posted frequent ads on Twitter for “Kelly,” specifying approximately where she would be that week (such as the Las Vegas strip) and whether she would be “outcall”—going to the client—or “incall”—having the client come to her. Beyond the now-defunct Twitter page, Haley Heston barely left a public online trace. StatsCrop, a site that tracks web history and performance, found as of Dec. 20 that the site is worth $9,175 and has 399 visitors and 2,075 page views a day.
The firm is breaking local and federal laws by conducting business across state lines. According to a post on The Erotic Review, the website advertises escorts in multiple states. In a blog post cached by The Smoking Gun, the service reassured its clients that “any information shared with us cannot ever be found, released, or subpoenaed. At all. Period, no if’s, and’s, or but’s.” The post also explained that Haley Heston’s website is not hosted in the United States and all contents, including client emails, are “anonymoulsy [sic] hosted by an offshore company, secured in a trust, so that the identity of HHPCollection is not public. Moreover, not even the hosting company knows who we are -- we paid with cash.” The post also claims that the service’s cell phone number is unregistered. “With a hard luck story and a little charm, we obtained cellphones that are not registered to anyone,” it reads. “These measures are never compromised,” the post concludes, “they do not come cheap, nor easy, but we are thorough and discretion is extremely important to us -- ours, our ladies, and yours!”
Melissa Farley, the executive director of Prostitution Research and Education, a non-profit organization that advocates against prostitution, says that while Haley Heston may be the escort service du jour, it’s hardly the only one that operates as anonymously as possible.
Hamilton’s story “exposes what is probably more common than most people know about corporations or businesses that are very, very, very sketchy,” Farley says, “and are most likely breaking not only State of Nevada and federal laws but also international laws” about prostitution and inter-state and international prostitution.
“The whole purpose is to avoid the police and avoid detection,” Farley says, “the business of prostitution in most parts of the world depends on being able to help johns stay invisible. The Internet has been a huge boon to pimps because it helps keep everyone invisible.”
Farley says she doesn’t doubt that whoever is behind Haley Heston is most likely a pimp or group of pimps. “They are receiving money from prostitution and they have a great deal of control – both physical and mental – over the women that are in their employ.” Haley Heston seems sketchy to be sure, but perhaps not enough to attract the attention of local law enforcement. A spokeswoman for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department told The Daily Beast the department has been made aware of Haley Heston Private Collection and the link between the service and Hamilton, but the department cannot locate any criminal history of anyone related to the firm. The department has not been made aware of any ongoing investigation into Haley Heston but the spokeswoman says if there was a current investigation, the details would most likely not be released. Since Haley Heston is an interstate operation, local law enforcement could hypothetically be cooperating with the F.B.I on any current or future investigation. Meanwhile, plenty of below-the-belt information on Hamilton, or “Kelly,” has leaked out through various escort review sites.
She is described on one review site as having “a tight spinner body without an ounce of fat on it…See this woman. You won’t regret it.”
In her bio, Kelly gives her prices and measurements, including bra size, and says she prefers San Pellegrino or a nice Pinot Noir on a date. “I never expect gifts, but if one ever wants to provide a special treat for me, I have a liking for Louis Vuitton, Agent Provocateur, Herve Lager and Christian Louboutin Expensive tastes I know :).”
She advertises that she is available on short notice and ready to travel. After an initial $600 per hour, her services cost $1,000 for two hours and $500 for each additional hour.
Another escort review site describes Kelly as “the All-American girl of your dreams…She is a college grad and a successful business woman who has traveled the world many times over. She loves to work out and takes excellent care of her phenomenal body.”
One astute john even noted that Kelly “is solid as a rock like a marathon runner.”
