MASONS GONE WILD??? ROYAL ORDER OF JESTER MEMEBERS GUILTY OF PROSTITUTION

News Type: Event — Thu Aug 14, 2008 1:23 PM EDT

us-news, prostitution, royal-order-of-jesters, tills, trowbridge, stebick

Sandy Frost

An attorney and member of two Masonic sub-groups has pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiring to violate the Mann act after admitting to driving a prostitute across state lines so she could be sold for sex to members of the Royal Order of Jesters at one of their weekend stag parties.

Michael R, Stebick, a former prosecutor for the Erie County district attorney's office, a former New York State Supreme Court law clerk and former Impressario or leader of the Jesters Buffalo Court #18 was caught with a retired police captain and a former New York State Supreme Judge, both also Jesters, during a fifteen month federal investigation into human trafficking.

Human Trafficking is defined as "the recruitment, transportation, harboring, or receipt of people for the purposes of slavery, forced labor and servitude."

Stebick has agreed to cooperate with the Human Trafficking Task Force/FBI investigation into the scandal plagued Jesters.

Before a man can be a Shriner or Jester, he must first become a Master Mason. He can then join other sub groups like the Scottish Rite, the Knights Templar or the Shriners. So, a man who is a member of the Royal Order of Jesters was first an invited Shriner who was first a Master Mason. (1)

Stebick is the second Jester to enter into a plea agreement with federal prosecutors for Mann Act violations. His plea agreement can be read here.

Last March 20, retired police captain John Trowbridge pleaded guilty to one felony count of violating the Mann Act by transporting prostitutes to Jester parties in Kentucky and Pennsylvania. Trowbridge was originally scheduled for sentencing on July 31, but will now be sentenced on November 4 due to being a witness in other cases. His plea agreement can be read here.

Ronald Tills, the former New York Supreme Court judge, has yet to go public with any cooperative agreements though federal court documents reveal that he was recently added as a defendant in an unrelated RICO complaint.

"Cooperation" for both Stebick and Trowbridge is spelled out in both their plea agreements as:

* Providing complete and truthful information regarding the defendant’s knowledge of any and all criminal activity, whether undertaken by the defendant or others, in any way involving or related to the unlawful transportation of individuals for prostitution or other sexual activity which is prohibited by law.

* Submitting to interviews by government attorneys and agents.

* Testifying truthfully and completely before grand juries and at such pre-trial and trial proceedings.

* Testifying truthfully and completely in local, state, and federal courts in jurisdictions which have agreed to abide by the plea agreement.

* Providing proactive cooperation to the government regarding individuals involved in criminal activity involving unlawful transportation of individuals for prostitution or other sexual activity which is prohibited by law.

* Providing cooperation to any local, state, or federal authorities designated by the government.

In exchange, Stebick could be imprisoned from four to ten months, be fined from $3,000 to $30,000 and be on supervised probation for two to three years.

The plea agreement's factual basis is based on facts that both Stebick and U.S. Attorney's office agreed to. It states that in October, 2005, the defendant, Michael R. Stebick, together with John Trowbridge, Len Wah Chong, a former New York State Supreme Court Judge AKA "Judge" and others whose identities are known to the parties, agreed to knowingly transport a woman who was an illegal alien from New York to Kentucky.

Chong owned four "massage" and "acupressure" businesses that were fronts for prostitution and kept as many as 11 illegal aliens as sex slaves. She pleaded guilty to a Felony Information early last April, charging her with "Sex Trafficking of Persons by Force, Fraud and Coercion." More details can be read here.

Stebick's plea states that Trowbridge picked up the prostitute from Chong's Golden Acupressure business and then "drove her to a parking lot of Leisure Land in Hamburg, New York to board a motor home driven by Stebick to transport her, the co-conspirators and others known and unknown to the U.S. Attorney's office, to Ashland, Kentucky" so she could:

"engage in sexual intercourse and other sexual activity in exchange for money with members of a men's organization of which the defendant, John Trowbridge and the Judge were members, and which organization was holding a gathering in Kentucky the weekend of October 28 - 30, 2005. This organization maintained chapters throughout the United States, including in Western New York, and it was the custom of these chapters to host periodic meetings, usually on weekends, for their members. At most of these meetings, some members of the organization would be tasked to arrange for the presence of women at the meetings, for the specific purpose of utilizing the women to engage in sexual intercourse and other sexual activity with the organization's members in exchange for money...The facts set forth above are those about which the government had independent information prior to the time the defendant indicated a desire to cooperate with the government and agreed to give statements regarding the defendant's involvement in criminal activity. It is understood and agreed to by the parties that additional information provided by the defendant cannot be used against the defendant."

Part of Stebick's plea agreement was to "immediately criminally forfeit" his 2000 Challenger 335 MHA motor home. It will be sold, with the proceeds also forfeited.

This is the second sex scandal to hit the Royal Order of Jesters after it was reported last March that nineteen members were also called as witnesses in a separate federal lawsuit to testify about their first hand knowledge of sex with minors while on a sanctioned Jesters fishing trip in Brazil.

Additionally, these three will most likely face disciplinary actions overseen by the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of New York, which could result in expulsion from the worldwide order. The Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of New York, Edward Savitzky, referred questions about the disciplinary process and the Grand Master's reactions to the Lodge's public relations firm, with no answers yet.

Stebick and Tills, both attorneys and members of the New York Bar Association, also face automatic disbarment upon pleading guilty to federal felonies.

A call placed to the Royal Order of Jesters headquarters to get reaction from executive director Alex Rogers was unsuccessful because their phone number has been disconnected.

This investigation is being conducted by New York Western District's Human Trafficking Task Force and Alliance.

According to a Department of Justice announcement, the task force was created in November, 2006 and "is a collaboration of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and non-government service organizations working together to identify, rescue and assist victims of human trafficking, human smuggling and other civil and human rights offenses in the 17 counties of the district, through aggressive investigation, prosecution, training, education and outreach to law enforcement, non government organizations, vulnerable and affected persons and the general public."

These groups include the FBI, Erie County Sheriff's Office, Custom and Border Protection, Unted States Border Patrol with the assistance of the Niagara County Sherriff's Office and the Tonawanda Police Department. The case is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert C. Moscati, who is also in charge of the task force.

In closing, Moscati said "We will go wherever the evidence leads us."

(1) The Royal Order of Jesters is an invitation-only fraternal sub-group of the Shriners, best known for operating a network of 22 hospitals that provides free medical care to burned and crippled children. The Revised Constitution and Bylaws of the National Court of the Royal Order of Jesters spells out the close relationship between the two groups. It can be read here. Both groups have been classified as "non profit" or "tax exempt" by the IRS. A Shriner committee that was tasked with investigating the alleged unethical conduct of hospital leaders Ralph Semb and Gene Bracewell. The committee's report revealed, among other things, that Semb may have knowingly executed a fraudulent tax return. Semb and Bracewell are also Jesters. The Interim Report can be read here.

All copies of material reprinted or duplicated from "by Sandy Frost" must include the following credit line: From http://sandyfrost.newsvine.com/ Copyright © 2008 by Sandy Frost. Used by permission.

NEW AGE FREEMASONARY SEE MEMBERSHIP BOOM

The secretive society gains a higher, hipper profile as younger men seek out a place for fraternal bonding.
By Adam Tschorn, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 18, 2008
IN LOS FELIZ, across from a 7-Eleven on North Vermont Avenue, a few dozen men in their early 20s to late 80s share a dinner behind closed doors. Some wear full tuxedos with bow ties and jeweled cuff links, some have shoulder-length hair, and others wear open-collared shirts that reveal the slightest filigree of tattoo arching across their chests.

Over Italian food, retired lawyers and judges sit elbow-to-elbow with owners of scrap metal yards and vintage clothing boutiques. They hold forth on philosophy, the weather; they rib each other and joke about saving room for cannoli. As they reach for seconds, they reveal skull-cracking rings emblazoned with a compass and a square.

Meet the millennial Masons. As secret societies go, it is one of the oldest and most famous. Its enrollment roster includes Louis Armstrong and Gerald Ford, and it has been depicted in movies such as “The Da Vinci Code” and “National Treasure.” Once more than 4 million strong (back in the 1950s), it has been in something of a popularity free-fall ever since. Viewed with suspicion as a bastion of antiquated values and forced camaraderie, the Masons have seen membership rolls plummet more than 60% to just 1.5 million in 2006.

Only now the trend seems to be reversing itself, and nowhere more noticeably than in Southern California. The reasons seem clear. In another Masonic Hall, this one on La Cienega, a Sri Lankan-born banker, a sunglasses-wearing Russian immigrant and a continent-hopping Frenchman break bread, poke at their salads and chat about their health.

"For a time it looked as if Masonry was going into a sharp decline, if not the death throes," said UCLA history professor Margaret C. Jacob, who has written extensively about the fraternal order. "But it looks like it may be making a comeback."

That's because the Freemasons, whose tenets forbid soliciting or recruiting members, have enthusiastically embraced the Internet as a way to leverage curiosity about an organization with its roots in Europe's medieval stonemasons guilds. Freemasonry today sees itself as a thinking man's salon, a learned society with a philanthropic bent.

"We had a record number of new members last year," said Allan Casalou, grand secretary of the Grand Lodge of California. "We added 2,000 men, which is the most since 1998 and our seventh straight year of membership increases."

And, to paraphrase that Oldsmobile campaign, these definitely aren't your father's Freemasons. They are bar owners, male models and olive-oil brokers. They are men like Zulu, an L.A. tattoo artist with a swirling Maori-inspired design inked across his face and a panoply of metal piercing his ears, nose and face. They are men like Jonathan Kanarek, who runs a men's vintage clothing store on Hollywood Boulevard and whose retro chic wardrobe of polka-dot ascots, glen-plaid jackets and smartly pressed pocket squares earned him a spot on Esquire magazine's 2007 list of best-dressed real men in America. And they are men like Daemon Hillin, whose surfer-dude looks and blinding white smile can be found on Japanese TV, where he plays sidekick and comic foil to the Japanese version of the Hilton sisters.

They are also all men who want to be part of an all-for-one and one-for-all brotherhood built on shared ideals, philosophical pursuits and a penchant for rings, aprons and funny hats. As Zulu bluntly put it: "I joined because I was looking for people to hang with that were like-minded but also hip and cool, and a lot of tattoo artists tend to be drunks and druggies."

Hillin, who originally joined the Masons in Temecula, moved to L.A. and is interested in the Santa Monica-Palisades Lodge No. 307, one of the youngest and most diverse congregations in the state (the average age of active brothers is just 33). The lodge's senior deacon, Jim Warren, calls it " 'Star Trek' without the chicks." "We have every possible national origin, ethnicity and religious denomination you could imagine," he said.

Warren credits the Internet. "We were one the first lodges in the state to have a website up," he said. "That led to a huge spike in membership."

Other lodges followed suit, putting up their own sites and drawing a crowd. That's how prospective Mason Johnny Royal ended up at the door of Elysian Lodge No. 418 last month. Intrigued by the distinctive Masonic architecture that graces most halls, the 31-year-old publicist with sideburns to his chin and hair to his shoulders and a Renaissance lute player tattoo on his right forearm hit the Web.

What he read about the Masonic ideals -- wisdom, strength, beauty and the pursuit of knowledge -- made him decide to pursue membership. "My generation wants to be part of something beyond itself," Royal said. "I want to learn; I want to participate."

The Web generation

THE INTERNET hasn't only made it easier to learn about the Freemasons, Casalou says, it's changed the type of men coming forward. "There is so much information on the Internet that by the time someone comes to a lodge to seek membership, they already know a lot about Masonry," he said. "Which is a big departure from previous generations. And it means they are more likely to be active participants."



Zulu became curious about Freemasonry after tattooing Masonic symbology on several clients. He joined five years ago at age 39 and now serves as webmaster and senior warden of North Hollywood Lodge No. 542. He has also gone on to become both a Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner (Masonic membership is a prerequisite for both), and next year he will become the leader of his lodge. "I'll be the first black worshipful master in the lodge's history," he said, using the proper term of respect.

But he probably won't be the last. Because California's contingent of Freemasons is expected to grow, the average age of its members, once 71 and now 65, is expected to drop. By 2018, as Casalou predicts, the state will be awash in 55-year-old pre-retirement Masons giving each other secret handshakes, wearing ritual aprons and invoking the Grand Architect of the Universe.

The Internet continues to help. Zulu said that he gets at least four e-mails a week from prospective Masons around the globe who see his tattooed and pierced visage at the lodge website and want to be reassured such an alternative look isn't a barrier to membership.

"Yeah, I think it's going to become hip and chic to be a Mason," Zulu said. "And that could be a dangerous thing."

adam.tschorn@latimes.com