They call it the Sin City Cabaret and this strip club lives up to its name.
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Located on the other Park Ave., in an industrial corner of the Mott Haven section of the Bronx, abutting a taxi cab lot ringed in concertina wire, the Major Deegan Expressway and the Harlem River, Sin City often draws a glittering clientele.
Giants wide-receiver Odell Beckham, rappers 50 Cent and Drake and former Knick Amare Stoudemire have all partied amid Sin City's topless, G-string clad dancers. In November, a $25,000 diamond ring reportedly flew from Beckham’s finger while he was on the dance floor, never to be seen again.
Sin City's self-described 'bossman' Gus Drakopoulos is pictured with Odell Beckham (left) and rapper 50 Cent (right) in undated photos.
In 2012, a dispute at the club between the entourages of Drake and Chris Brown later erupted into a brawl at a downtown dance spot that included shattered champagne bottles and tossed martini glasses.
Meanwhile, former club employees say the joint often draws gang members and other troublemakers intent on settling beefs and brawling.
Konstantine (Gus) Drakopoulos, who describes himself as the club’s “Bossman,” is a convicted white-collar felon.
He has employed an ex-con who did 10 years for manslaughter as a kind of intermediary with gang members to keep the peace, according to records and sources.
That man is now in prison for selling cocaine out of the club and carrying a loaded gun. Drakopoulos also had a retired NYPD inspector on the payroll.
Even though it has been plagued by drug sales, gang activity, shootings, fights and allegations of prostitution, Sin City seems beyond the reach of cops, the State Liquor Authority, and local politicians. Community leaders see the fleshpot as coated in Teflon.
And with good reason.
Despite high-profile drug arrests at the club in June, the SLA renewed Sin City’s license as it slogs on in its review, now in its eighth month.
The NYPD, meanwhile, quietly settled after suing to shutter the club for being a “place where individuals gather to engage in criminal activity.”
Drakopoulos, his lawyers, and a manager have denied wrongdoing, and say criticism of Sin City is unfair and misguided. They argue that it’s a beacon of employment in the economically struggling South Bronx with an unparalleled security operation.
“All we are is one of the largest employers in the South Bronx with over 100 employees who try to maintain good relationships with our local authorities and the community,” Drakopoulos told the Daily News. “You can take that and twist it any way you like.”
A lawyer for Drakopoulos initially indicated interest in allowing The News to interview Drakopoulos more fully, but then backed away.
Enter Sin City.
CORSETS & COGNAC
The club inhabits a warehouse once used for car auctions in a heavily black and Hispanic neighborhood long afflicted by crime, unemployment, pollution, and high rates of asthma.
Customers line up under a ruby awning, next to a sign on the wall that reads “no hats, hoodies, baggy jeans, sagging jeans, sweats.”
Past the imposing doors, patrons pay $20 and go through metal detectors and across a large burgundy carpet to sit on red velvet banquets or black chairs around little tables under the glow of pink-purple lights and booming rap music.
Patrons go to a booth to change large bills into singles taken from the office safe and piled in thick stacks. Ultimately, the singles find their way into strippers' G-strings. The club takes a cut of $1 out every $20 for the change-making service.
A smoking room, which is barred under city ordinance, has often been available to customers, and until recently a bathroom attendant sold loose cigarettes as he handed out paper towels, State Liquor Authority transcripts show.
The crowd is a mix of men in camo hoodies and backward caps and others who look like they had just sat for a GQ magazine shoot.
They munch on $19 pineapple shrimp and $28 T-bone steaks, drink $13 Hennessy Sweet Tea cocktails and can plunk down $2,200 for a Jeroboam of Krug Brut Cuvee or $4,000 for a bottle of Louis XIII de Remy Martin cognac.
Women in black and gold corsets with skin tight black shorts pour drinks behind the bar, as strippers gyrate on little stages or prowl the club looking for $20 “plus a tip” lap dances.
Some dancers can make $1,000 to $2,000 a night, and the waitresses, or “bottle girls,” can take home $600 nightly, according to former employees who spoke with The News.
The dancers kick in $30 to $150 a night to work there, the former employees said.
Nightly revenue for the club itself ranges from around $13,000 on a typical Tuesday to close to $60,000 on a Saturday night, according to internal records obtained by The News. Annually, the figures suggest that Sin City takes in roughly $11 million - not including what the dancers and waitresses make.
‘THIS IS HEDONISM’
In a club awash in cash, five former employees — with a combined 20 years of Sin City experience — separately described a Wild West environment where just about anything could happen, where just about everyone hustled for money.
“That place is hedonism,” said one of the former workers. “What goes down there is insane.”
A former waitress says she started wound up at Sin City by responding to an ad in Craigslist. While already working a day job, her role at the club was to flirt and upsell customers on alcohol. On many nights, she ended up with $600 in wages and tips.
“You get the hood, because you’re in the Bronx,” she said. “Wannabe rappers. But a lot of my customers were corporate guys. You had to have tough skin not just because you're working in a strip club but because of the harassment from some of the managers. A lot of times it was unprofessional.”
While she says she never let customers get too close to her, other women blurred the lines.
“I can't knock any of the women...it’s what they have to do,” she said. “Some managers will stop it, and some won’t.”
A former dancer said she started at the club at around 18.
“You can make so much money in there, you kind of get lost in the money.”
“A lot of people ask me why, but my back was against the wall,” she said. “I needed to help take care of my family. You can make so much money in there, you kind of get lost in the money.”
As for other dancers, she said: “A lot of them had just come to America and needed money. Some girls just wanted to get high. Some girls had pimps.”
While the money was great, she said that she too suffered from harassment by some managers. In one incident, she said a manager grabbed her face when she rejected his advances. In another, she says a manager demanded she pay him bribes to continue dancing.
She said the stress of the constant harassment was tough on her: “The crazy thing is that I used to never ever drink. I started drinking at 22. One of my customers started me drinking. I was dancing sober for years. And it eventually became a problem I had to overcome.'
She has since moved on from the life and has a new career.
“I’ll probably never get married,” she said. “It’s kind of like the dancer’s curse.”
A HISTORY OF MELEES
The odor of marijuana was often strong in the club, a former employee said, but the bouncers frequently ignored it to avoid confrontations.
The bouncers had reason to be nervous. In 2011, bouncer James Britt was slashed by patrons while breaking up a fight, according to his lawsuit.
He needed staples in his head and stitches in his neck. A second bouncer, Wilfredo Delgado, was slashed on the nose in the same fight. Britt’s lawsuit settled in 2015 for an undisclosed sum.
“Guards got about $110 a night, so it’s not worth getting into a situation over weed,” he said. “You have like 600 people in there and 15 bouncers, and five of them are at the door. That’s just not enough to control a crowd that size.”
He said violence was so routine at times that it was only notable when someone got seriously hurt.
“It wasn’t safe to work there at all,” said a former bouncer. “There was one time when a guy shot a gun outside the club, and he was later allowed to come back in.”
Consider what happened April 29 2015. A brawl erupted in the club just after 2 a.m., according to court records in a case brought by one of the combatants.
When security tried to grab one of the men, he ripped free and waded, screaming, back into the fight. Another patron threw a chair into the melee. Dozens of customers ran outside to avoid the violence.
“There was one time when a guy shot a gun outside the club, and he was later allowed to come back in.”
On a different night, 20 gang members took on the bouncers and smashed a metal barricade through the front door, two former employees said.
On Christmas Day 2013, a drunk man blasted the front door with a gun after getting kicked out.
“I’ve seen stabbings, shootings,” a former employee said. “I’ve seen people come out of the bathroom all cut up. I’ve seen mobs destroy the place, the cops wouldn't come for half-an-hour and it never made the news. They would just send everyone home and lock the door.”
Patrons included members of the drug-dealing “Sex, Money Murda” gang, which terrorized the Soundview section of the Bronx with violence for years, two former employees said.
“They would start fights and I would ban them, and then they would be let back in, even though the bosses knew they were out of control,” a former manager says.
From Jan. 1, 2016 to Thursday, cops responded to 137 calls to the club for incidents ranging from possible crimes to fights to injured people, the NYPD said.
TRAIL OF LAWSUITS
Sin City has had more than its day in court.
A News review found at least 38 lawsuits against the club in state and federal court — including 20 filed by people allegedly beaten, shot or slashed by other patrons and four by people who claimed they were beaten by club security.
Tysheema Brown said she was at the club with two friends on May 6, 2016 at about 2 a.m.
Two women at an adjacent table glared at her, and then jumped her, punching her in the head, according to the police report.
“They were beating her for five minutes and no one came over.”
One of the women allegedly smashed Brown in the head with a hookah lamp. Cops arrested two women.
“They were beating her for five minutes and no one came over,” said Brown’s lawyer, Laurence Savedoff. “These girls were creating trouble all night. There's a real lack of security there, and they let in questionable characters.”
Brown has sued for $15 million. The case is pending in Bronx Supreme Court.
Camron Golphin alleged in a suit filed in Bronx Supreme Court that he was slashed in the face at a St. Patrick's Day party in 2015.
His lawyer, Michael Roitman of Frekhtman and Associates, said that the episode happened during a “midget boxing” match in which the club set up a ring and brought in little people to fight.
He alleges Golphin was slashed in the culmination of events that included Sin City’s serving a customer too much liquor and allowing the slasher to get a blade past metal detectors.
The club sued the man who slashed Golphin, and the case is still pending.
Nathan Medina filed a similar claim as a result of a fight in which he says he was slashed with a box cutter. His lawyer lawyer Gary Fish alleged that metal detectors weren't working that night,
“Apparently, the man wasn't satisfied with the lap dance he got and he lashed out both metaphorically and physically,” Fish said. The case is pending.
“...the man wasn't satisfied with the lap dance he got.”
Attorneys for the club have alleged in court papers that Medina was to blame for his injuries. The case is still pending.
In 2015, Samuel Thrower sued the club in Bronx Supreme Court for failing to provide adequate security, stemming from an incident in which a friend was mugged in a club bathroom and he was shot in the shoulder in the parking lot. The suit is pending.
The club denied any misconduct and asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed.
Sin City has also been hit with at least five employment-related court actions.
In 2010, six cocktail waitresses alleged a pattern of verbal and physical sexual harassment.
In one instance cited in the lawsuit, manager Kevin Wells allegedly stuck a dancer's foot in his mouth. Another plaintiff claimed Wells stuck his finger in her buttocks, and a third claimed he routinely squeezed her rear hard.
The plaintiffs also claimed they were denied overtime and tips.
While a Sin City lawyer disputed the charges at the time, the Manhattan Federal Court case was settled in 2011 for approximately $150,000, according to court records and a source familiar with the case.
Wells left the club after the suit was filed — but the club posted a picture of him Monday on Instagram, writing, “He’s back. Kevin has returned!”
Drakopoulos’ lawyer Harvey Slovis denied that Wells had been rehired, and said the number of lawsuits against the club was small.
“Your lawsuit stuff is a joke,” Slovis said in an email to The News. “You are talking about 15 years of activity and the only lawsuit I know about is one of workers compensation. This place is the least violent of clubs in this city and I have represented many. You are passing over the elephant to squash an ant.”
THE ‘BOSSMAN’
Konstantine (Gus) Drakopoulos, 40, the man who presides over Sin City, grew up in Astoria and built his little South Bronx empire with two associates: Lampros Moumouris, a Texas strip club owner, and Kyriacos Mavros, a Florida real estate entrepreneur. Former workers confirmed their roles. Their names were on incorporation records.
Drakopoulos, who refers to himself as a “nightlife impresario, entrepreneur and aviation pilot,” has done well. Last year he bought a 5,000-square-foot five-bedroom mansion for $850,000 in Peconic on Long Island’s North Fork. The house had been advertised as a “gentleman’s estate home.”
Boisterous and emotional, Drakopoulos holds court at the club with rappers and other entertainers — and he allegedly profits despite the fact that he’s not on the liquor license, which would likely be a violation of state law.
As of Thursday, Drakopoulos was listed on the state incorporation papers of the club’s parent company, SCE Group.
But his mother’s name — Stavroula Drakopoulos — is on the liquor license, along with those of Moumouris and Mavros.
That may be because, around the time Sin City opened in 2002, Drakopoulos pleaded guilty to securities fraud in Brooklyn Federal Court for illegally trading stock on inside information about a merger involving a frozen turkey processing company. Moumouris was a co-defendant.
Although such a conviction would bar Drakopoulos from owning Sin City, he has left no doubt on social media as to who runs the show:
He used the Instagram handle “GusBossMan,” and has loaded his account with photos of himself with celebrities and dancers.
On Nov. 8, Sin City posted on Instagram about a party for Gus at the club, referring to him as the top guy.
“Definitely our biggest party of the year. @gusbossman 40th birthday party. VIP and celebrities coming to celebrate with the boss man himself. Gus!”
Although Drakopoulos often pals around with black celebrities at Sin City, a lawsuit indicates and former employees say he has repeatedly made racist remarks.
In 2014, dancers Kieara Gaskin, Tenia Stuckey and Denise Miller sued Sin City, alleging that Drakopoulos used the n-word and said things like, “We don’t want the ghetto element you attract.”
They claimed Drakopoulos and manager Kevin Wells called African-Americans “b-----s, hos and sluts,” according to the suit.
The dancers also alleged that women with darker skin were generally not hired, and if they were hired, they would be relegated to less lucrative day shifts, when Drakopoulos was not there.
Additionally, they claimed they were forced to pay arbitrary fines. Gaskin, for example, asserted that she had to pay $500 to Wells to return to work after leaving for a period.
Finally, they claimed that managers slapped, grabbed or poked their privates. A lawyer for the club denied the allegations at the time. The Manhattan Federal Court case settled in June for an undisclosed amount. Neither Gaskin nor Stuckey, would comment for this article.
In a 2013 text message obtained by The News, Drakopoulos sent a fake Christmas card showing a black man in prison garb behind security glass with a black woman talking to him over a prison phone.
The caption read: “Merry Christmas from the Johnsons!”
In a 2014 text, Drakopoulos sent a picture of two black men dressed in black clothes and backwards baseball caps to a manager and wrote, “U need to speak front door about being (sic) more selective at door.”
Said a former dancer: “Gus would come to the back and say things like ‘I got these n-----s coming and fighting in my club,’ but whenever a black celebrity would come to the club it was all good.”
Slovis, Drakopoulos’ lawyer, sent The News a current picture of the club’s dancers which shows a significant number of African-American women.
“As you can see, the roster has a lot of black girls,” Slovis said in a text message. “You telling me Gus is a racist is pretty funny. 75% of the girls (are) black and Hispanic.”
Drakopoulos also engaged in a tryst with a dancer, according to a video viewed by The News.
Recorded on a club security camera on Nov. 24, 2012, the video shows an undressed woman performing two sexual acts on Drakopoulos as he sits on a couch in his office.
The woman’s identity is being withheld by The News.
Asked about the video, Drakopoulos first asked in a brief interview, “Why is this relevant?” and then added, “I’m a family man.”
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Later, he issued this denial: “I do not engage in any sexual activity with any of my employees.”
‘TERROR ZONE’
Sin City has been a major frustration for members of Bronx Community Board 1.
District manager Cedric Loftin said the club has generated dozens of complaints about violence and illegal activities and that the board has sent a half-dozen letters asking the State Liquor Authority to shut the club.
'We get complaints about violent activities that spill out into the local commercial community, and also illicit behavior,' Loftin said. 'We feel that their license needs to be violated and they need to be shut down but our complaints have fallen on deaf ears.'
Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz has also called for closure.
“Sin City has not been a good neighbor to The Bronx.”
'Sin City has not been a good neighbor to The Bronx, and my position has not changed: this establishment is a nuisance, and it should have its liquor license revoked,' Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. said.
In a 2013 letter, the community board cited 61 reports of dangerous activity stemming from the club, called Sin City a “terror zone” and noted that its liquor license had lapsed.
Regardless, the SLA renewed Sin City’s license.
The board last sent a letter to the authority in December, citing violence, emergency responses by the FDNY and “active” drug trafficking “since its inception and over its last liquor license renewal two years ago.”
Again, regardless, the SLA renewed Sin City’s license — without notifying the board.
While Loftin and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. have called for the club to be shutdown, the other pols who represent the neighborhood have been silent.
City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, State Sen. Jose Serrano and state Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo did not respond to requests for comment.
UNDERCOVER 141
In 2014, NYPD detectives opened an investigation into allegations of drug dealing in the club.
Over the next 17 months, four undercovers made repeated cocaine buys from dancers and bouncers, court records show.
In a recent SLA hearing, one of those detectives, identified as Undercover 141, took the stand hidden behind a screen and told of her nights buying drugs among the red velvet booths.
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She testified that she had only to walk across the burgundy carpet to a stripper or a bouncer and ask if they had any cocaine, a transcript of her testimony shows.
As dancers moved their bodies and music boomed, she secured powdered cocaine wrapped in a dollar bill or secreted in a match box emblazoned with the Sin City logo.
“Other people can still see you, security guards there can see you, other people going by,” she said, adding of a stripper: “I asked her if she could get some for me in the future. She said ‘yes’ and I only had to let her know ahead of time.”
The detective also testified to the existence of the illegal smoking room, and a bathroom attendant who sold loose cigarettes.
SLA associate counsel Margarita Marsico called the club’s smoking room a “walking health code violation.”
In June, the NYPD arrested nine strippers and bouncers for allegedly dealing cocaine.
Blair Padilla (left), 29, and Santa Estevez (right), 28, appear at their arraignments in Manhattan Supreme Court July 2016. Padilla and Estevez, identified as a Sin City dancers, were two of nine people indicted in connection with the sale of drugs at Sin City.
(Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News)HE’S ‘TROUBLE’
Among those busted was Charles Percell, a convicted felon also known as “Trouble.”
In the drug case, Percell, 47, was identified as a Sin City bouncer, but former employees described him as both a bodyguard and as an intermediary between the club and gang members.
“You get a wolf to deal with the wolves.”
“He was a buffer between the club and gangs,” a former employee said. “The projects are only a few blocks from the club and that's where he grew up. He had a way to talk with them. You get a wolf to deal with the wolves.”
In addition to prior robbery and drug arrests, Percell was convicted of manslaughter in 1991 and was sentenced to six to 18 years, records show. He was released in 2001.
In February 2012, while working at the club, he was convicted of aggravated drunk driving — and still wasn’t done with breaking the law.
In November 2015, cops busted Percell for carrying a loaded .40-caliber Glock. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison. He was then rearrested for selling cocaine in Sin City, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in prison.
In addition to netting Percell, the undercover investigation has secured three guilty pleas from a bouncer, a dancer and a woman who was dating a dancer. Five other cases are pending.
In an impassioned defense of the club posted in August on the Observer's website, Sin City manager Frank Aleman slammed the NYPD probe, writing:
“Four cops had to come into Sin City including on holidays, watch topless dancers all to allegedly buy a few grams of cocaine, and as a result of something management knew nothing about, there will be scores of people on the unemployment line.”
Aleman went on to claim the club has the “strongest security in the business.” He ended his letter with the slogan: “No justice, no jobs, no boobs, no fair.”
CLOSING TIME
Following the June arrests, the State Liquor Authority filed 18 safety code violations against the club in an effort to shut it down — charges strongly denied by the club’s lawyer. The agency also filed charges based on assaults and noise complaints, a spokesman said.
Part of the SLA investigation has been looking at whether management knew about the drug dealing.
At the same time, the NYPD filed a lawsuit aimed at shutting the club under nuisance abatement laws that empower the city the power to close places used for illegal activities.
Eight months later, little has changed. The SLA has held a series of hearings, but the club hasn’t been shuttered once.
On a recent Friday, about 40 patrons sat at tables drinking and ogling the women.
At one point, the DJ yelled, “There we go ... Show me some t-----s baby!” A dancer named “Dior” encouraged a patron to touch her butt and he put dollars into her G-string and slapped her rear.
Although SLA officials insist they are taking the case seriously, the agency knew three years ago that Drakopoulos appeared to run the club and to profit without his name on the liquor license.
The SLA finally charged him with a violation known as “availing” in late December.
The SLA subpoenaed the bank account statements and wire transfers to see whether Drakopoulos had an undisclosed interest in the club.
“The SLA charged Sin City with availing their license to Konstantine Drakopoulos after finding evidence that the licensee is allowing Mr. Drakopoulos, a person not licensed by the SLA, to operate and profit from the business,” SLA spokesman William Crowley said.
Around the time the SLA acted, Drakopoulos pulled down his “Gus Bossman” Instagram page, and Sin City posted that Moumouris was the new “bossman.”
Sin City lawyer Martin Mehler has argued that the club had no idea about drug dealing, and that the strippers and bouncers were not employees, but contract workers who float from club to club. He also argued that the club had more than adequate security.
“I can show you beyond a shadow of a doubt that it (the drug dealing) wasn’t permitted by this licensee,” he told the SLA board in a hearing. “Because these people tried more times than not to get these drugs and couldn't get them inside my place.”
In an interview, Mehler said he believes the charges are meritless, stating that Drakopoulos is only a Sin City employee.
“He’s not a principal of the premises,” Mehler said. “No one ever said he wasn’t managing it.”
Slovis said, “It is absolutely untrue that Gus owns that club. He manages it and I know the owners.”
NYPD BLUES
Last September, even as the NYPD and the State Liquor Authority investigated Sin City, cops posed for photographs with the strip club’s employees at a charity softball game.
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Drakopoulos immediately posted photos of the employees, clad in skin-tight T-shirts, grinning and posing with the cops in NYPD shirts and hats at the event.
The relationship between cops and the strip club has been of many shades.
Deputy Inspector Brian Hennessy, the 40th Precinct commander, has complained in public meetings that violence at the club draws cops from other duties. The NYPD would not make him available for an interview.
For years, though, Drakopoulos has employed retired NYPD Inspector James Alles, who commanded the 45th and 52nd precincts, as his security director.
The News previously reported allegations that Alles’ job was in part to convince police commanders to downplay or not report incidents in and around the club.
The 2013 incident in which someone fired bullets into the club door was never conveyed to the SLA, The News reported.
“Alles advised the club how to handle the police,” former manager Mike Diaz said in July. “If the cops needed an explanation on something, he would give them an explanation.”
The News has since learned that the city Department of Investigation has opened a probe into those allegations.
A DOI spokeswoman said, “DOI is aware of the matter and declines further comment.”
Mehler, the club’s lawyer, said he wasn’t aware of a DOI probe.
In the nuisance abatement lawsuit, NYPD lawyer Antony Anisman argued that the club needed to be closed because it was a “serious public nuisance.”
“For well over a year, the premises has been a location where individuals gather to engage in criminal activity,” Anisman wrote.
In its press release on the drug case, federal prosecutors wrote that the nuisance abatement case was triggered “in response to persistent criminal activity inside and around the club, including acts of violence.”
But then, the NYPD agreed in November to drop the case in exchange for a $100,000 fine — in $30,000 increments spread over three months — and the right to conduct unannounced inspections.
The NYPD could already conduct unannounced inspections of a business with a liquor license. The searches were included in the settlement to remind the club of that fact, a police official said in a statement, adding: “The settlement allows for the business to continue to operate and for law enforcement to ensure that criminal activity is not being conducted at the location.”
As for that softball game, an NYPD spokesman said it was between the NYPD and Def Jam Records, not the strip club.
“The NYPD did not play Sin City in softball,” the spokesman said.
PAST SIN CITY COVERAGE
- July 15, 2016: Strippers busted for selling $22G of coke out of South Bronx club to undercover cops
- July 27, 2016: EXCLUSIVE: Bronx strip club where workers were hit with drug charges has retired NYPD cop on payroll
- July 31, 2016: EXCLUSIVE: Sketchy Bronx cops never reported Sin City strip club Christmas shooting to state Liquor Authority
- August 2, 2016: Bronx borough president: Infamous strip club Sin City Cabaret needs to be shut down