I recalled Palfrey operated Pamela Martin and Associates, a legal escort agency in Washington, D.C. She was convicted in 2008 of racketeering, using the mail for illegal purposes, and money laundering. Two weeks later the 52-year-old was found hanged in a shed at her mother's home in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Autopsy results and the final police investigative report concluded that her death was a suicide.
From a Vice Magazine article in 2017:
"A decade ago, one of the biggest scandals to rock Washington, DC, was the revelation that some prominent lawmakers and government officials had allegedly been customers of Pamela Martin & Associates, an escort service operated by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, a woman better known as the 'DC Madam.' "
"In October 2006, following a two-year investigation conducted by the United States Postal Inspection Service and the IRS, federal agents raided Palfrey’s Vallejo, California, home and froze her bank accounts. The government, which secured an indictment against Palfrey on money laundering, illegal mail use, and prostitution-related racketeering charges, alleged that Palfrey’s DC escort service was in fact a high-end prostitution ring that she had operated via phone and email from Northern California since 1993."
"Palfrey, however, insisted Pamela Martin & Associates provided 'legal, high-end erotic fantasy service' and that she had no idea her escorts had sex with customers. In March 2007, after she was charged, she turned over a list of nearly 10,000 phone records spanning four years to ABC News. (Palfrey said she didn’t know the names of her clients. She only had their telephone numbers.)"
"For days leading up to ABC’s exclusive interview with Palfrey, investigative reporter Brian Ross teased that Palfrey’s clientele included White House officials, lobbyists, and Pentagon, FBI, and IRS employees, as well as prominent lawyers. 'There are thousands of names, tens of thousands of phone numbers,' Ross said."
"But ABC backed away from naming names, and Palfrey accused the network of bowing to government pressure by withholding them. In the end, the network only revealed a few of the most prominent officials on Palfrey’s client list, including Republican senator David Vitter, Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias—who resigned when details of his use of escorts surfaced—and an adviser to the Pentagon, Harlan Ullman."
"Palfrey was back in the news last year, when her former attorney Montgomery tried to get the US Supreme Court to allow the release of records from Palfrey’s escort service, including customer names and Social Security numbers, which a lower court judge had already barred him and Palfrey from releasing. Sibley said the information in the Palfrey’s records could impact the presidential election. The Supreme Court denied his applications."
"Palfrey’s brief reappearance in the news reminded me that I had not filed a Freedom of Information Act request for her file from the FBI, the IRS, and the US Postal Inspection Service. So I fired off an application, and about seven months later, the FBI sent me 54 pages but withheld 33. (The IRS has not responded and the US Postal Inspection Service has produced a couple of pages, with a promise that more are forthcoming.)"
More at link:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/inside-the-us-postal-services-investigation-into-the-dc-madam-v24n3/
Only a tiny portion of Palfrey's client list was ever released, the full list was never made public. A court-ordered gag order prevented the release of the remaining 817+ client records.
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