Posted on 05/20/2004 7:00:41 AM PDT by presidio9
That's a lot of lap dances. A Manhattan insurance executive was handed an eye-popping $28,000 bill after hours of Champagne-fueled frolicking at the East Side strip club Scores.
But Mitchell Blaser, 53, contends his wild night out could not have added up to anywhere near the amount charged to his American Express card - enough to buy a new Chevy Trailblazer.
He slapped the topless mecca for celebrities and high rollers with a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court, claiming hanky-panky - of the financial sort - was behind his gargantuan tab.
The upper East Side bachelor's lawyer, Leonard Zack, told the Daily News that Blaser was expecting a bill of about $2,000.
Zack accused Scores of fraud. "It's a swindle, and they probably do it to a lot of people who don't want to do anything," he said.
But Scores spokesman Lonnie Hanover said the naked truth is that Blaser flashed his credit card with a cost-is-no-object zeal while out treating a pal and the pal's girlfriend on Dec. 11.
"If you want to party like a [movie star] you can, but it is going to cost you," Hanover said.
He added that the club has Blaser's signed receipts to prove "this is a totally frivolous lawsuit."
For beginners, he said Blaser - chief financial officer of the Americas division of Swiss Re, the world's second-largest insurance company - ordered five magnums of Clos Du Mesnil Champagne, at $3,200 a pop.
"This man purchased our most expensive bottle of champagne. It is rated the best in the world," Hanover said. "You can have a wonderful bottle of champagne for $300. This is the extreme. ... The last person to buy one was a head of state."
Then there were the lap dances.
Hanover said Blaser charged $7,000 worth of Diamond Dollars - the club's currency - and he doled them out like candy for $20 lap dances. "At $7,000, he had a dozen girls hanging on to his words for several hours," Hanover said.
Blaser also ordered $500 worth of hard-liquor shots, Hanover said. Throw in tips and food, and it adds up to $28,000, according to Scores.
But Blaser contends that when he left the club at Second Ave. and 60th St., he grudgingly signed a bill for $8,615, only because he was intimidated by the club's staff. After he stepped outside, he realized the bill included a tacked-on $4,000 gratuity, he claims in the suit.
When he later called American Express to complain, he was told his card had been swiped three additional times, and his total bill was for $28,021, his suit charges.
Blaser filed a criminal complaint with the NYPD at the 19th Precinct stationhouse on April 14.
Hanover said Scores - whose customers have included Dennis Rodman, Howard Stern, Colin Farrell and Carson Daly - has strict procedures when it comes to big spenders.
He said the club's policy is for the general manager to advise visitors when their bill tops $5,000, and to call American Express to authorize charges as they accrue.
Hanover also said Blaser signed not one, but three credit card receipts through the night. And, he said, American Express conducted its own investigation and notified Scores on Jan. 22 that the charges were legitimate and the case was closed.
Hanover said it all boils down to Blaser partying like a champ but waking up the next day feeling like a chump.
"It is very intoxicating being surrounded by beautiful girls," Hanover said.
I would think that if we can have pictures from an Iraqui prison, we should be able to get the same from Scores right? ;-)
don't you go getting all defensive about your topless story... ; )
Women can be very expensive. If you're looking for a lap dance with beautiful girls for hours at an exclusive club it will cost you an arm and a leg. Er more if you insist cost is no object to obtaining pleasure for you and friends with lovely lasses.
Can you fill us in on the mafia angle?
Kinda makes me question Swiss Re's motto:
"Your expert in capital and risk management"
Seems as though he failed at both...
Uhhh...sometimes it can cost other appendages, especially when the wife opens the American Express bill.
Just damn (from so many different angles).
Not that I've ever been in one of these establishments myself, you see, but I'm told that they are owned by the Gambinos. Running the card of a drunken customer several times is a time-honored scam, because 99% of the time the victim is not going to want to get the police involved and have his wife find out where he really was when he claimed he was working late at the office.
Was he using his own credit card or was this a corporate account?
When somebody else is paying, you tip alot with that funny money. Plus you get to sit in the celebrity section and they bring you jumbo shrimp and drinks non-stop. And none of its free.
Well, it was free for me.
They're two things wrong with this story..neither make any sense..First, the guy's obviously a valued Amex customer. And his compnay probably has a slew of Amex corporate crads..And with Amex especially, you just dispute the charge, and they'll suspend payment while they investigate...if they felt it was legitimate, he should have know better than to sue.. The guyprobably makes multi-millions, and you can't buy this much bad publicity if you tried...which means that he's stupid, egotistical, and way tooo dumb to be running a divisionof SwissRE...prediction..he's out within a year..
Hehehe.... the best place to get free drinks (and I'm not giving away any secrets here) is at your local casino.
$28,000 is probably chump change given his income. He probably has a half million limit on his credit card so I don't think he's maxed out. The rest of us couldn't even so much as go into one of these clubs.
Flash, bling, boobs, big bills, booze, big booze and broads. Just the man to be CFO of one of THE linchpin companies in our MODERN economy.
What it it? That only the Mafia has the standards to give him some come-upance? Yet look at the man's sheer arrogance. He ceratinly doesn't feel his job or his company's future is at risk, eh? Hubris is King of MODERN CFO's, is it?.
Absolutely an indication of a lousy money manager -- unless Swiss Re is a Theifdom, a Cave of Bandit Treasures. Is that how thngs are with the big money players in this latemost stage in age of fiat money? To be expected! Yet ...
By all that is good and needed for our soical and moral health, this misfeasance -- should be intolerable to shareholders and directors -- to anyone, really.
Well, not exactly. The Chevy website (http://www.chevrolet.com/trailblazer/) has these babies "starting at" $28,105 (for a 2WD model and that's without tax, title and license) and going all the way up to $40,340 for the "north face edition". I doubt you'll be driving off the lot for 28k.
Wow, never heard of this stuff before, but it's no wonder they don't sell it to anyone but heads of state at that price. WineSearcher shows you can get magnums for about $700. Quite a markup . . . Not illegal, just huge. What a racket.
So, this guy got an education about "buy-me-drink" girls, lol, an expensive lesson.
Maybe that's where John Kerry met all those heads of state who told him to run...
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