Caratagena (Colombia) Apr 20: A Colombian prostitute at the centre of the ongoing Secret Service sex scandal has revealed how she was offered only $ 30, instead of her $800 fee for a night with one of the three US Secret Service agents. All the three have been removed from service.
After a wild night of partying in Cartagena last week, the 24-year-old escort claimsed she was offered $30 - a fraction of her $800 fee - for a night with one of the men.
'I tell him, 'Baby, my cash money,' she recalled in an interview with The New York Times recounting a heated exchange with the Secret Service agents.
The single mother from Colombia who makes a living as a high-priced escort faced off in a room at the Hotel Caribe a week ago over how much he owed her for the previous night's intercourse.
“I tell him, ‘Baby, my cash money,' ” the woman said in her first public comments on the dispute.
The disagreement over her price — he offered $30 for services she thought they had agreed were worth more than 25 times that — set off a tense early morning quarrel in the hallway of the luxury hotel involving the woman, another prostitute, Colombian police officers and American federal agents.
On Wednesday, the Secret Service prepared to fire one supervisor tied to the alleged misconduct with prostitutes on the Cartagena trip, the agency said in a statement.
Another supervisor has decided to retire, and a third employee will be allowed to resign, the statement said. Eight other employees remain under investigation, The New York Times reported..
“These guys have the clearest cases,” said a government official briefed on the investigation, referring to the three who are being pushed out.
The employees have been asked to take lie detector tests; only one has agreed to do so, the official said. The supervisor who is being fired has threatened to sue, Mark Sullivan, the director of the Secret Service, has told officials.
The Colombian sex worker described how she and another woman were approached by a group of American men at a discotheque.
She said the men bought a bottle of Absolut vodka for the table and when that was finished bought a second one.
“They never told me they were with Obama,” she said, “They were very discreet.”
A taxi driver who picked up the woman at the Hotel Caribe the morning of the encounter said he heard her and another woman recount the dispute over payment.
There was a language gap between the woman, 24, and the American man who sat beside her at the bar and eventually invited her to his room.
She agreed, stopped on the way to buy condoms but told him he would have to give her a gift.
He asked how much. Not knowing he worked for Obama but figuring he was a well-heeled foreigner, she said, she told him $800.
The price alone, she said, indicates she is an escort, not a prostitute.
“You have higher rank,” she said. “An escort is someone who a man can take out to dinner. She can dress nicely, wear nice makeup, speak and act like a lady. That's me.”
By 6:30 the next morning, after being awoken by a telephone call from the hotel front desk reminding her that, under the hotel's rules for prostitutes, she had to leave, whatever deal the two had agreed on had broken down.
She recalled that the man told her he had been drunk when they discussed the price. He countered with an offer of 50,000 pesos, the equivalent of about $30.
Disgusted with such a low amount, she pressed the matter. He became angry, ordered her out of the room and called her an expletive, she said.
She said she was crying and went across the hall, where another escort had spent the night with an American man from the same group. Both women began trying to get the money.
They knocked on the door but got no response. She threatened to call the police, but the man's friend, who appeared on the scene, begged her not to, saying they did not want trouble.
Finally, she said, she left to go home but came across a police officer stationed in the hallway, who called in an English-speaking colleague.
He accompanied her back to the room and the dispute escalated. Two other Americans from the club emerged from their rooms and stood guard in front of their friend's locked door. The two Colombian officers tried to argue the woman's case, says the NYT report.
A hotel security officer arrived. Eventually, she lowered her demand to $250, which she said was the amount she has to pay the man who helps find her customers.
Eager to resolve the matter fast, the American men eventually gave her a combination of dollars and pesos worth about $225, and she left.
It was only days later, once a friend she had shared her story with called to say that the dispute had made the television news, that she learned that the man was a Secret Service agent.
She is dismayed, she said, that the news reports described her as a prostitute, as if she walks the streets picking up just anyone.
“It's the same, but it's different,” she said, indicating that she is much more selective about her clients and charges much more than a streetwalker.
“It's like when you buy a fine rum or a BlackBerry or an iPhone. They have a different price.”
“I'm scared,” she said, indicating that she did not want the man she spent the night with to get into any trouble but feared that he might retaliate.
“This is something really big,” she said. “This is the government of the United States. I have nervous attacks. I cry all the time.”
The Secret Service has expanded its investigation to look at its employees' conduct on previous presidential trips.
Besides the 11 Secret Service personnel, 10 military personnel, including explosives experts and dog handlers, are under scrutiny in a separate Pentagon investigation, officials said.
The pick-up took place at a discotheque, believed to be the PleyClub, in Cartagena and after a night of drinking.
