Itzler, who estimated he’d need at least $250,000 to get his cybersex company up and running, somehow persuaded his stepfather to find new investors. Ron Itzler thought of Fred Baum, a 49-year-old housing developer with a Ferrari collection and a short temper. Baum thought Jason was obnoxious as hell, possibly even a little crazy. But he was willing to make allowances because he was convinced that the young man was a computer-savvy marketing genius who was going to make him absurdly wealthy.
Baum was so certain of this that he called his longtime friend and business partner Bruce Glasser. Glasser made a good living in textiles, but like Baum, he’d always been receptive to investment opportunities that provided an escape from his more mundane ventures. This one certainly fit the bill.
Contracts were drawn up. For this new venture, to be called Baum Multimedia, Glasser fronted $100,000 (a loan, he says); Baum put up $150,000. Company documents indicate that each of the three men owned a third of the business. Glasser, however, now claims that he and Itzler were consultants and only owned options; Baum, he says, was the sole proprietor.
Itzler set out to secure a suitable location. By late 2000, he’d found just the thing in a landmark cast-iron building at 415 Broadway. The third-floor space covered 7,000 square feet, featured majestic fifteen-foot ceilings, and was drenched in sunlight. (“The space gave the project instant credibility,” says Richard Renda, a stylist and video producer who worked briefly at SoHo Models. “It’s what got me and a lot of other people interested and excited.”)
The loft was so grand that it seemed a shame to use it for nothing more than porn. A streaming-video business, after all, could get along just fine in a basement. Then Itzler had a vision. Since beautiful women draw more customers, why not create a phony modeling agency and use it to attract a superior grade of prospective talent? Glasser objected that the models would flee for their lives once they learned they were being hired to masturbate in front of a web cam. “Not if we tell them they can make $5,000 a week,” Itzler countered.
In honor of his favorite New York neighborhood, Itzler named the ersatz agency SoHo Models Management. He began to hype it around town, handing out sleek, glossy business cards everywhere he went. The cards gave his name as Jason Sylk. He claims that the name change was prompted by a falling out with his stepfather, and besides, he says, Sylk is “a beautiful name.” Others insist his motives were simpler. “Jason’s made so many enemies and burned so many bridges that he had to change his name,” says one former M2 employee.
Next on the agenda was to assimilate himself into the New York fashion culture. One of the first people he hooked up with was Ed Feldman. By way of introduction, Feldman mentioned that he was listed in the modeling world’s definitive Who’s Who: the index of Michael Gross’s Modeclass="underline" The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women. Had Itzler checked the index and turned to page 241, he would have read that Feldman had wielded a heavy wooden mallet on an agent named Jeremy Foster-Fell in 1981, sending him to the hospital.
“Someone once asked me to name the three most rotten bastards in the whole industry,” one grizzled fashion veteran recalls. “I said, That’s an easy list: Ed Feldman, Ed Feldman, Ed Feldman,’ Nobody else comes close.”
Like everyone else who met Itzler, Feldman was intrigued. This kid from Miami with a fortune to spend on a new modeling agency was almost too good to be true. Feldman began to act as Itzler’s mentor, freely sharing his Rolodex, making introductions, and advising his new protégé every step of the way. Feldman asked Joey Grill, who was overseeing operations at the Click agency, to “teach Jason the modeling business.” Grill complied, giving him a Cliffs Notes overview of the industry.
The list of fashion victims who met with Itzler-and believed his story-goes on and on: I.D. Models owner Paolo Zampolli (“I thought the guy was loaded with millions”); Q Models owner Jeff Kolsrud (“I think that Jason does have money”); photographer Marco Glaviano (“I said, ‘Send me the girls when you open’”).
“Everybody thought it was legit,” says Lee Kalt, Itzler’s first hire at SoHo Models. “I would see him pulling the wool over their eyes. It amazed me the way people believed Jason.”
One of those people was the photographer Peter Beard. Itzler says he offered Beard 10 percent of the agency in exchange for his “expertise.” What he really wanted, though, was Beard’s imprimatur. Although Beard wasn’t the fashion-world force he had been when he was shooting for Vogue in the sixties, his name still opened doors. After an impromptu business meeting, Itzler invited him to inspect the 415 Broadway property. Later that evening, Itzler took Beard to the roof. Here, stoned and feeling more confident than he had since the old M2 days, Itzler had another flash of inspiration: SoHo Models would be a bona fide modeling agency.
“I was going to do a whole different type of agency,” Itzler explains. “It was going to be hip, stylish, and trendy. One that people talk about and that had an element of European class.” Think of Elite in the early nineties, but with models who went all the way on the first booking. “In three weeks, the project went from the concept of a bait and switch to me saying, ‘Fuck that! I’m going to kick ass at this modeling agency!’”
Itzler saw no potential conflict in having a modeling agency on the same floor as an Internet-sex service. On the contrary, he actually envisioned a synergy between them. “The models would hear how much the Internet girls were making, and they’d check out Baum,” he says. “And if the Internet girls were pretty enough, they’d be able to cross over to SoHo Models.”
Itzler needed all the synergy he could get. Baum Multimedia had promised to provide content 24/7, which meant finding enough girls to fill the twenty booths for three eight-hour shifts each day. He composed a vague help-wanted ad that ran in The Village Voice and New York Press classified sections: “Make $3,000 a week!! + benefits & the most flexible schedule you could want.” Some ads even promised applicants that they’d be able to watch MTV while they worked.
When respondents realized that the position entailed performing sex acts live on the Internet, many stomped off in a huff. The rest filled out applications. Models who were already working for established agencies like NMK, Next, Click, Major, and I.D. began showing up, books in hand. A surprising number of them accepted jobs. “We got a lot of innocent girls coming off the street saying, ‘Yes, I’m here for the modeling agency,’” one former Baum employee recalls. “And Jason would say, ‘Sure! Come on in.’”
Itzler says he was conducting between sixty and seventy interviews a day, in the privacy of his on-site living quarters just a few feet from the booths. “I built a gorgeous bedroom with a marble Jacuzzi, two-head shower, and everything,” he says. “Two smoke machines, disco lights-it was a combination bedroom-disco.” In his interviews, Itzler would tell the applicants to strip and pose for Polaroids; sometimes he’d smoke pot with them. “It’s not like you’re hiring accountants. You’re hiring these crazy young girls that are doing very open-minded stuff.”
One stripper, who sees herself as a “Kate Moss type,” interviewed with Itzler because she thought she might be able to cross over to SoHo Models. “Once he mentioned the modeling agency, tons of thoughts and hopes were running through my head,” she says. Itzler told her that he needed to see how she would perform on camera. “He tried to have sex with me,” she says. “I kept my bottoms on at all times, but he touched me everywhere else. We started smoking pot, then he took off his clothes. When I noticed he was aroused, I told him, ‘You’re not putting that in me!’” She stops suddenly, then confesses, “I was broke. That’s why I let it progress as far as it did.”