On July 27, Itzler received a voice-mail message on his cell phone accusing him of “corporate espionage.” “I think you better turn yourself in to the police,” the message said. “Freddie has new partners. They’re very, very serious people. They’re coming after you, Jason. You better get out of the city and the state of New York. You’re in a lot of trouble, kid.”
Itzler wasn’t buying it. He’d been threatened before, and he was still standing. But the next day, he got a second message, and this time he began to think the threat was real. “Jason, we know it’s you,” the voice said. “You’re going to have the shit… You’re going to be in bad shape. You’re an asshole.”
Prudently, Itzler decided to leave New York. He flew to Amsterdam and spent his money getting high in the tourist cafes and getting laid in the red-light district. While he was getting stoned one day, he had what passed for a moment of clarity: Running away was crazy. Threats or no threats, he would return to the States and open an Internet-sex service in Miami. Now that he had learned how not to run one, it would be easy. Then he’d take the profits, return to New York, hire the best booker in town, and relaunch SoHo Models.
With his remaining $3,000, Itzler bought around 4,000 ecstasy tablets. By the time he was ready to go home, several days later, he says, he had 3,869 left, which had a street value back in New York of more than $116,000. He put the pills in a plastic bag, strapped the bag to his body, and boarded a flight bound for Newark International Airport. When he landed in Newark on August 1, Itzler was fidgeting and sweating profusely. Drug-sniffing dogs and steely-eyed Customs police were everywhere. Itzler was arrested during a routine search. “I must have looked nervous,” he says.
Itzler was charged with possession of narcotics and possession with intent to distribute. Shortly after his arrest, he was swearing “on his mother’s memory” that his only intent was to kill himself by blending the 3,869 ecstasy pills in an extra-large chocolate milk shake. “I already tried it with 100 pills, and all that happened was that I woke up groggy. I wanted to make sure this time.” Although the story is not quite as implausible as it sounds-after all, he had once tried to commit suicide by stabbing himself in the chest with a steak knife-he’s apparently had second thoughts about it. He now says that he was an ecstasy addict, and that the pills were for his “personal consumption.”
According to Glasser, Baum Multimedia was essentially out of business by September 2001, although it limped along until December, when the computers and equipment were stolen. Unable to raise the $25,000 bail, Itzler has been locked up in Essex County Jail in Newark since August, enjoying the company of some of New Jersey’s finest gang members. “It’s been terrible,” he says. “I’ve been beaten up by Bloods and Crips five times. Once a Crip punched me really hard in the kidneys. I was pissing blood.”
Itzler has no regrets about his brief but memorable excursion through the fashion world. “When I was running the agency, I’d never had more fun in my life,” he says. “I was meeting thirty new gorgeous girls a day. It’s just paradise. It’s like being Hugh Hefner, with the girls warming themselves up all day.”
And he knows what he’ll do when he’s paid his debt to society: head back to Manhattan and reopen SoHo Models. He might even find some old friends willing to give him a second chance. Peter Beard, for one. “Modeling agencies are horrible bussinesses with dykes that demand sexual favors from the girls,” Beard says. “This is the cheap-shit industry that you’ve seen exposed over and over. Amongst all this bullshit, I’d just as soon listen to good old Jason.”
Itzler’s time in jail has not been completely wasted: He has been writing a memoir. So far, he has twenty-seven chapters and a title: Ecstasy. “I think I’m going to sell two million copies and get enough money to start life over again,” he says. “Although my story isn’t a positive one with a hero emerging at the end, I’ve never read anything more interesting than the shit I’ve been through. It’s action, action. Up, down. Kill myself, live. My shit’s cool.”
He adds that anyone interested in buying the film rights should contact him through his lawyer. Then, a few days later, he reports that he has fired his lawyer and is trying to persuade Lenny Sylk to hire “the Johnny Cochran and Bruce Cutler of Newark.” He’s confident he will be back in action before long.
The State of New Jersey apparently has other ideas. When prosecutors presented Jason’s case to a grand jury earlier this year, they added a third count: possession with intent to manufacture, distribute, and dispense. A first-degree felony usually levied against drug kingpins, this new charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years.
In some ways, jail has changed Jason Itzler. His street swagger is virtually gone, replaced by the first inklings of a sense of responsibility. “I did something stupid,” he says, “and now I have to pay the price.”
He is stunned when he learns of the new charge and the prosecutor’s assertion that he is looking at “significant time,” even with parole. There is a long silence while he considers this. The seconds tick by on his collect call. For a moment, it almost seems that he is chastened, humbled by the news. And then:
“Is this going to be a cover story?”
Like all great journalism, “Sex, Lies, and Video Cameras” started out as a Page Six item. I remember the salacious headline vividly: “MODELS ATOP A PORNO PARLOR.” The gossip item told the heartwarming tale of a millionaire entrepreneur from Miami, known as the Phone-Sex King, who had come to New York to open up a combination modeling agency/porn website. What’s not to like about this story? I thought to myself between chuckles. I immediately clipped the item from the New York Post and pinned it to the wall.
The pitch was money: Johnny Casablancas meets Larry Flynt with a gritty Elmore Leonard vibe. The fact that a hustler from South Beach was hawking this rather unorthodox business model around town wasn’t that interesting to me. Far more intriguing was that Mr. Itzler had evidently managed to wrangle a top photographer as a business partner and was taking meetings with some of the key players within the fashion industry. I reread the item: fashion models, online sex, a gorgeous SoHo loft where all of this seductive commerce was to take place. Something didn’t smell right This is a good thing. As any journalist will tell you, the best stories are the ones that smell slightly gamy at the start. This one was still fresh and already it was stinking up the town like a runny wedge of Limburger. That’s when I decided to do the story.
Jason Itzler didn’t disappoint. He is a flimflam man from the old schooclass="underline" charismatic, earnest, and always working a new scam. There’s no telling how far he would have gone if he had decided to peddle, say, California real estate instead of desperate girls and ecstasy tablets. Groupies will be pleased to know that Mr. Itzler was released from the New Jersey State Correctional System in January 2003 after serving seventeen months and one week of a five-year stretch. Collection agencies, cuckolds, and IRS agents can reach the former Phone-Sex King through the New Jersey Parole Board. He is currently looking for venture capital funds and is available for interviews.
LAWRENCE WRIGHT: THE COUNTERTERRORIST
The legend of John P. O’Neill, who lost his life at the World Trade Center on September 11, begins with a story by Richard A. Clarke, the national coordinator for counterterrorism in the White House from the first Bush administration until last year. On a Sunday morning in February 1995, Clarke went to his office to review intelligence cables that had come in over the weekend. One of the cables reported that Ramzi Yousef, the suspected mastermind behind the first World Trade Center bombing, two years earlier, had been spotted in Pakistan. Clarke immediately called the FBI. A man whose voice was unfamiliar to him answered the phone. “O’Neill,” he growled.