A Scottish former New York madam whose clients are said to have included film stars, billionaires and politicians has launched a fresh bid to overturn her conviction.
Anna Gristina, 55, spent four months on remand in the notorious Rikers Island prison in 2012 after she was caught in an undercover FBI sting. Prosecutors alleged that Gristina, who grew up in West Lothian, made £6 million from running a vice ring for affluent and influential men in New York's Upper East Side.
She admitted a single charge of promoting prostitution and was sentenced to five years' probation and time served. However, the mother-of-four has claimed her guilty plea was "coerced" and she is planning to lodge an appeal to have it overturned, reports the Daily Record.
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Her legal team filed a lawsuit against the judge who dealt with her case in 2012 seeking the release of transcripts from it but were last year denied access to the documents. She has now taken the case to the US Court of Appeals.
She is seeking judgment stating that she is entitled to the unsealed court minutes so she can make a "meaningful motion" to overturn her guilty plea.At a hearing, her lawyer Lawrence LaBrew said: "Our position is that the minutes should not remain sealed. She wants to make a motion to set aside the judgement in her case and she needs those minutes so the defence can make an informed decision as to how to pursue that motion.
"The claim is she was coerced into pleading guilty. In order to find out what exactly was going on, and who said what, we need the minutes."
Following her arrest, involving a sting with an undercover officer posing as a potential client, Gristina was held at Rikers Island and her bail was set at $2million. She pleaded guilty in September 2012 to a felony count of promoting prostitution in exchange for a sentence of six months in jail, which amounted to time she had already served.
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Manhattan prosecutors said her client list included New York's very wealthy and connected. None of her alleged clients were named publicly or charged, however, and she refused to hand over her contacts book. Gristina has insisted she ran a matchmaking service and never forced anybody to have sex with clients.S
he now lives quietly in a modest house in New York state, where she tends pigs and writes children's books. In an interview last year, she claimed she refused an offer to provide women for billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein.
She said she refused to deal with Epstein, who killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting a sex trafficking trial, after hearing rumours he abused young girls.
She said: "I did a little digging and my friend told me to stay away. If I had known more at the time I would have turned him in." A judgement in the case will be issued at a later date.
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