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Michael J. Peter played a large role in turning strip clubs into "gentlemen's clubs." Places, in other words, where businessmen could do deal while watching women take off their clothes on stage.

''Before me, the strippers were fat, ugly and dirty, and had no manners,'' Peter told the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. ''I made them beautiful and well behaved.

''Michael Peter knew that if he could apply to topless bars the management principles of upscale clubs, he would be successful.''' (11/10/97)

A fast talker, Peter lived the high life, surrounded by beautiful women and driving a red Ferrari. He based his strip club empire in South Florida, where he owned six clubs, including Pure Platinum, Solid Gold in Fort Lauderdale and North Miami, and The Dollhouse in Pompano Beach.

In 1994, the federal government began investigating Peter's businesses, convinced that the Mafia worked with Peter. In 1993, Peter pled guilty only to mail fraud, for not listing an investor in one of his bar's liquor license application. He became federal inmate No. 08018-073.

Born around 1947, Peter stood 5'6" and tended to speak of himself in the third person. He started entrance into strip clubs in Orlando.

The former Ivy Leaguer replaced tattooed biker chicks with surgically enhanced fashion models. He substituted $200 a bottle Dom Perignon for beer, and soft leather sofas for Naugahyde chairs. Instead of Outlaw bikers, his patrons were stockbrokers and dentists. They charged lap dances on their Visa cards. (Sun Sentinel, 11/10/97)

At his peak in 1993, Peter owned or managed 50 clubs in North America and Europe, including six in South Florida. His businesses grossed $ 100 million in sales and provided 5,000 jobs.

From the Sun Sentinel: "In an industry where image is everything, Peter flaunted his private jet, red Ferrari and black Rolls-Royce. He slept in a giant, cage-like iron bed covered with satin. He loved to be seen shooting skeet from an 82-foot yacht he kept docked at his Delmar Place mansion in swanky Lauderdale Isle. He still speaks fondly of his appearance on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous in the late 1980s. ''Gentlemen's clubs are a world of fantasy and flash,'' he said. ''To live in it, you have to lead a life of fantasy.""

Michael Joseph Peter studied at the prestigious Cornell University School of Hotel Management, falling just short of getting his Masters Degree. He moved to Orlando in 1973 where he managed the money-losing Dubsdread Country Club, a hangout for Orlando's blue blood.

He turned the place around. He hired beautiful women who modeled bikinis during lunchtime. But Peter struck the management as a con artist, and six months in, they fired him.

''Business was booming, but Michael was a natural con man,'' Dr. Carl Dann, an Orlando orthodontist whose family owned the club, told the 11/10/97 Sun Sentinel. ''When he first came for an interview, he presented himself very well. He was impressive, and so was the woman who accompanied him. He introduced her as his new bride. Boy, was she beautiful. 'Of course, it took me months to figure out he was never married.''

Soon afterwards, Peter drove along Orlando's Orange Blossom Trail, the city's informal red light district. He saw expensive cars parked outside a sleazy bar.

''At 3 p.m., the place was full,'' he said. But the bar, The Booby Trap, was a typical strip bar of the early 1970s. ''The girls hadn't shaved in three days,'' Peter said, grimacing. ''They had no teeth, dirty fingernails, no makeup. They were fat and ugly and barefooted. The place was pitch-dark. I was worried about getting mugged. But it was packed with guys in suits and ties throwing money around.

''So I figured, if I get dancers who would only be 10s, if I dressed them in sequined gowns, made them wear good makeup and taught them to light the patrons' cigarettes and speak well, I would have something.'' (Ibid)

Peter bought a cheap bar, the Red Lion, for $ 13,000 and renamed it Thee Dollhouse. He put in good carpeting and lighting and made the bouncers wear tuxedos and bow when customers arrived. The dancers used a staff makeup artist and hairdresser, and took etiquette lessons. Within six months, the club was grossing $65,000 a week.

Until this time, the strip club business was run by a motorcycle club, who did not take kindly to Peter's new direction. Michael had fired many of the dancers who did not live up to his standards of cleanliness and good manners.

A group of bikers once arrived at The Dollhouse to burn it down. They met Peter outside and his shotgun toting friends. Peter arranged a meeting with the leaders of the gang and told them that clean classy strippers made more money. And that he had friends in organized crime who would avenge his death.

Peter now claims that was a lie, but he's long been thought to have mob ties.

Orlando's conservative establishment was next saw Peter as out to destroy the city's Christian values. But Peter's lawyers successfully challenged every ordinance that threatened his business. In time, Peter came to control the Orlando nude dance scene. ''I bought the whole street, shut down most of the bars, and ran six of them,'' Peter said. ''It was like a topless Disneyland.'' (Ibid)

Peter employed the wife and sons of reputed mobster James Tortoriello Jr..

Peter found out that businessmen in Dallas and Houston were copying his ideas. Michael wanted to better them and expand his kingdom. So he set up operations in South Florida. He first bought a round pink and lavender building at the corner of U.S. 1 and Sample Road near Pompano Beach. It became Thee Dollhouse III.

A few years later, a federal report on Peter's activities quoted a confidential informant claiming that co-owners in the Thee Dollhouse III were Boca Raton builder James Williams (supposedly a secret mob-connected investor and the friend whose name Peter failed to list on the liquor license application), and Ettore Zappi, a reputed leader of the Gambino family.

While the informant's claims were never verified, they attracted the attention of the Broward County's Metropolitan Organized Crime Intelligence Unit, a task force of local police agencies. Their investigation led to a 10-count racketeering indictment against Peter in December 1995. He was formally charged with allowing members of the Gambino family to keep a hidden interest in his three South Florida clubs. He was accused of making routine $ 500 payments to 80-year-old Gambino capo Natale Richichi. Had he been convicted on all counts, Peter would have faced 40 years in prison and the forfeiture of $ 17 million in assets.

The two sides compromised and Peter pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud. Meanwhile, his co-defendant, Richichi, was found guilty of racketeering and extortion, and sentenced to six years in a federal prison. Richichi is described in court documents as "the last living member of Albert Anastasia's Murder Incorporated."

Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale) 10/3/93:

Peter has just taken a contract to buy the famous Studio 54 in New York and turn it into the largest erotic show club in the world, seating 3,000 people. In the past year he has expanded his empire to three cities in Mexico, and he recently returned from Europe with deals for clubs in Athens, Barcelona, London and Paris. He will soon launch what may be the ultimate thaw in East-West relations: a high-class strip club in Moscow.

Besides the nightclubs, Peter has branched out with a new men's magazine, Platinum ("It's a combination of GQ, Sports Illustrated and Playboy,," he boasts); he produces action-adventure movies and is active in the recording and music-video industry. One of his companies will produce a new album by LaToya Jackson and a subsequent world tour.

Peter's headquarters remain in Fort Lauderdale, but what he calls the "creative" parts of his business are now handled in Hollywood, Calif., where he spends most of his time. He still has a home and two yachts in Fort Lauderdale, plus an estate in Orlando and an apartment in New York City. He will soon be taking a flat in London and is looking for a home on the French Riviera.

Known for his taste in luxury cars, Peter has a Ferrari, a Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible, a four-door Rolls, an Excalibur, a Mercedes and a 1959 Corvette. One of his retired Rolls-Royces is permanently parked outside Solid Gold in Fort Lauderdale.

New York Times 4/15/92:

About 1,100 topless clubs now exist in 47 states [about 50-60 of quality], up from about 800 in 45 states five years ago, according to Gentlemen's Club magazine in Austin, Tex., a trade magazine for the $3 billion-a-year topless industry. New Jersey has the most, 110, followed by Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania and New York.

The trend toward elegant topless clubs, which started in Canada a decade ago...

Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel 5/25/91: Millionaire adult entertainment mogul Michael J. Peter, who once said he wanted to "run the cleanest business in the world," was arrested Friday and charged with the kidnapping and extortion of a business rival [who worked for Charles Friedson aka Charley Frey].

Sun Sentinel 2/2494: A jury took only an hour on Wednesday to declare nude-entertainment impresario Michael Peter not guilty of charges that he threatened to use muscle on a business rival who was moving in on his most beautiful dancers.

Peter said he was set up by a business rival, a man named Charles Friedson, known as "Charlie Fry," and by a Fort Lauderdale police officer bent on running him out of town.

"There are good cops and bad cops, good strip joint operators and bad strip joint operators," Peter said. "This time, the bad cops went after the good strip joint operator."

The state's case rested largely on the uncorroborated testimony of the alleged victim, Carmen Cinseruli, who was carrying a gun at the time he was allegedly kidnapped in Peter's white Rolls-Royce in January 1991. Cinseruli was reluctant to press charges after the attack. He testified that Fort Lauderdale Detective Charles Funkey had to call him almost every day for a month before he came in to make a statement that led to Peter's arrest in May 1991. Funkey did not testify in the two-week trial.

Sun Sentinel 3/2/96

A former Playboy Playmate says the Broward State Attorney's office is dragging its feet prosecuting her ex-boyfriend on aggravated assault charges because the man is a government witness in the Michael J. Peter racketeering trial in federal court.

The trial of Charles Friedson, 35, of Plantation, has been continued at least 19 times during a 3 1/2-year period - a delay even prosecutors admit is unusual.

"They were basically hoping that I would forget about it and go away," Melissa Harberson Holliday said.

The case against Friedson involves allegations by Holliday that on Jan. 27, 1992, Friedson struck her several times in the face and caused her to hit her head on a table. Holliday said at the time of the fight she was pregnant with Friedson's child. She later miscarried, which she blames on her injuries.

1/14/2000

Friday morning Luke talked to Michael J. Peter, the strip club king. He now confines himself to consulting. He says that with his consulting deals (he's licensed the name Pure Platinum to five big new clubs around the world), he's now making as much money with his four employees than when he had 10,000 employees. Peter says he's in semi-retirement. Thanks to Kianna Bradley for hooking us up.

Kianna: "I told Michael he's been all over your site... Michael wants to know if the stuff on the internet is good or bad about him."

Luke: "Umm, not sure..."

Michael J. Peter comes on the line.

MP: "We're trademarking all over the place. We have five new ones opening. I license my trademarked names. I put investors with buildings and open them up for them. New York, Vancouver, Columbus, Los Angeles, Dallas and London. They're all Pure Platinums.

"I've got guys who work for me who do the consulting... It's basically the same thing I was doing in the late '80s and early '90s. It's much easier because I am not involved in management anymore. I'm semi-retired. I've got four employees instead of 10,000 and I make the same kind of money off my good will.

"People call me up looking to get into the business, or people who are in it already, looking to enhance their business..."