[Ruth Parasol] worked briefly in a personal injury law practice
before joining her father in a business that handled billing for
phone-sex lines.
She became a fixture at adult-industry gatherings.
"When I was coming up in '98 and '99, I would see Ruth at all
the trade shows and we would hang out," said Evan
Horowitz, who heads an online porn network called XPays. "I
remember her being very bubbly and happy and nice. I should have
dated her."
In the 1990s, Parasol advised Seattle phone-sex entrepreneur
Ian Eisenberg. He went on to mail fake "rebate" checks for $3.50
to millions of households. The fine print said that by cashing
the checks, recipients agreed to pay as much as $29.95 a month
for Internet service. The Federal Trade Commission sued and won
an order for $17 million in reimbursement.
Parasol and an Eisenberg protege named Seth
Warshavsky then invested millions of dollars in phone-porn
companies that were sued by North Carolina and Nevada authorities
for alleged improper billing and collection practices that included
threatening to seize a person's property.
In North Carolina's case, a judge ordered a firm co-founded by
Parasol to pay $270,000. The Nevada case was dropped after the
company filed for bankruptcy protection.
In one of their ventures, Parasol and Warshavsky were part-owners
of a 1-900 and long-distance operation called Starlink Communications.
Starlink's former president, George Holland, said he met Parasol
only twice.
Before their first meeting, he said, he assumed that any woman
in the "99% male" phone-sex industry would be a crone. Instead,
he found himself in the room with a quiet and extremely well-dressed
young brunette.
As federal rules about phone calls became stricter, the companies
went out of business. Warshavsky changed his approach to Web pornography.
By January 1996, Richard and Ricarda Parasol owned 49% of a holding
company that funded Warshavsky's best-known venture, Internet
Entertainment Group, which distributed a sex video made by actress
Pamela Anderson and rocker Tommy Lee.
Ruth Parasol co-founded IEG, according to a person close to her,
but Mendelsohn said she held stock in it only briefly.
Ruth's father and sister sued Warshavsky in June 1996, claiming
he reneged on an agreement to buy out their share of the business.
Ruth negotiated a settlement, according to the family's attorney
in the case, Bradley Keller.
...Some who dealt with Warshavsky were less fortunate. In a later
case, several former staffers accused him of routinely overbilling
IEG customers. Facing large unpaid debts, Warshavsky eventually
fled to Thailand. He could not be reached for comment.
...As the company [Starluck Casino which became iGlobalMedia
which became Party Gaming] grew and prepared for its public offering,
Parasol kept up her connections to porn specialists, including
the controversial Yishai Habari,
a major Internet traffic broker.
Habari was appreciated by porn publishers for paying handsomely
when they referred Web surfers his way. From January to May this
year, as PartyGaming was trying to build its share of the online
poker market ahead of its IPO, Habari directed the company's successful
Internet marketing program, which pays other websites to refer
players.
About five years ago, though, Habari was directing traffic to
porn websites that were part of a $650-million billing scam prosecutors
described as the most profitable enterprise under the control
of New York's Gambino crime family.
According to interviews with a dozen government officials, business
partners and employees of the once wide-ranging operation, Habari
sent people to porn websites that asked for credit card numbers
— ostensibly to ensure that viewers were at least 18 — and then
racked up bogus charges. Habari's company operated from the same
floor as one of the Mafia fronts.
Federal prosecutors brought charges in 2003, and a mob captain,
a soldier and four associates pleaded guilty in February. Habari
was not named in the indictment. Parasol's spokesman said that
when she suggested her old friend Habari for a top job at PartyGaming,
she believed that Habari had been only "a consultant to a consulting
firm that provided services" to the Gambino operation.
Habari did not respond to several requests for comment. He left
PartyGaming in the spring.
Ruth lives in Gibraltar and Yishai in Israel.