The State : Prisoner Ran Call Girl Ring

The biggest prostitution ring ever broken up in Northern California not only survived but prospered while being run by a federal prison inmate, the Justice Department announced. The $3.5-million-a-year prostitution ring apparently was run for the first four months this year by inmate Thomas Nathaniel Lusk from his jail cell in the Lompoc Federal Detention Center, according to Justice Department Agent John Irwin. Phone records show that Lusk, serving time for federal tax evasion, made “multiple calls per day” from the minimum-security prison to business associates in the San Francisco Bay Area, Irwin said. During that time, he said, “normal growth continued” for a sex delivery system that stretched from Sacramento to Santa Cruz and served more than 50,000 customers until it was shut down Tuesday. Lusk, 48, of Berkeley, was sentenced in October, 1987, to a nine-month term after pleading guilty in federal court to failure to file tax returns.