Jennifer Lopez is currently filming Hustlers, but the real life ringleader of a gang of strippers and hookers who scammed their wealthy Wall Street clients out of thousands of dollars is speaking out.
Samantha Barbash, who will be portrayed by J Lo in her film, says she hopes the movie star would reach out to her.
‘I’m really flattered Jennifer wants to play me,’ the 44-year-old Barbash told The Sun.
‘But if she wants to do it, she should talk to me.
Jennifer Lopez was photographed (above) on Friday in New York City while filming the movie Hustlers, a true story about a group of strippers who scammed wealthy Wall Street men out of thousands of dollars
J Lo will play Samantha Barbash (above), a single mother from the Bronx who was one of the top dancers Larry Flynt’s Hustler strip club in Manhattan in the early 2000s
‘Everyone who knows me knows the truth.’
In the early 2000s, Barbash was a top dancer at the Hustler Club in Manhattan.
The club was owned by pornographer Larry Flynt.
Barbash, a single mother from the Bronx, met another dancer, Roselyn Keo, who was 17 years old but lied about her age in order to perform at the club.
‘Everyone wanted to work with her because she had a lot of clients and knew how to work,’ Keo said of Barbash.
Barbash introduced Keo to a number of her regular clients, most of whom were men who worked on Wall Street and ‘wanted to have fun and get drunk and party with girls.’
Barbash eventually gathered a number of strippers and dancers who would lure men into clubs.
Karina Pascucci (left) is another member of Barbash’s crew who would lure men to strip clubs by drugging their drinks
Keo says that she would see men passed out drunk in the ‘champagne room’ – the VIP room in a strip club where customers pay for private time with a stripper.
She said: ‘I started noticing these b*****s make a lot of money and they don’t really work.
‘Samantha had found some loophole where, “I can get paid and not have to have sex”.
‘I’d be like, “Hmmm”.’
Barbash recruited younger girls like Karina Pascucci and Marsi Rosen, who were sent to meet the men in secret locations before leading them to local strip clubs.
Barbash recruited younger girls like Karina Pascucci and Marsi Rosen (above), who were sent to meet the men in secret locations before leading them to local strip clubs
Keo said that if the men resisted going to a club, the women would drug them.
‘Just a sprinkle, a pinch,’ she said.
‘It sounds so bad to say we were drugging people. But it was, like, normal.’
On any given night, they could scam a man out of tens of thousands of dollars.
‘What’s an extra $20,000 to them?’ Keo said.
‘It wasn’t like we pulled them off the street. They had history.
‘They’d been to Hustler. They walked in ready to party.’
Dr. Zyad Younan, a cardiologist from New Jersey, was scammed out of $130,000 by Barbash, Rosen, Pascucci, and Roselyn Keo in 2014
‘Yeah, we slipped an extra one (drug) they didn’t know about.
‘But all of it goes hand in hand — sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. You know?’
The men were unable to remember what happened to them, and those who complained about the bill were told that they were tipping everyone.
Some men were sent text messages showing photos of themselves in compromising positions.
Afraid of their wives’ reactions, they wouldn’t push the issue any further.
‘That’s why this worked so well,’ Keo said. ‘They would just let it go.’
One of those men was Dr. Zyad Younan, a cardiologist from New Jersey who was slipped a substance in his drink and knocked unconscious at a strip club in Manhattan.
Pascucci, Barbash, Rosen, and Keo admitted to drugging Younan and stealing his credit card to pay for lap dances and alcohol in 2014.
Younan, who was single at the time, said he first became involved with the women when he went out to dinner at a Manhattan restaurant and was approached by Pascucci, who claimed she was a nursing student.
They swapped numbers and she later asked him out to dinner.
They enjoyed several dinners together, as well as a concert, and on some occasions, she brought Rosen and Barbash with her, falsely claiming they were her relatives.
Barbash (seen above in Manhattan Criminal Court in 2017) was sentenced to five years probation for her role in the Younan case
During those evenings out, the women slipped a drug into his drink that ’caused him to enter a semi-conscious state, lose the ability to act voluntarily and make knowing decisions, as well as lose his memory,’ according to a lawsuit he filed against the Scores strip club.
Younan said he was shocked when he got an American Express bill for $135,303.14 in charges to a strip club – which he didn’t even remember going to.
He reported the charges as fraudulent and American Express reversed the charges – which left Scores and the three women irritated, he said.
Scores had demanded that the doctor pay the bill.
But last year, a Manhattan judge ruled in Younan’s favor, saying he did not need to pay the bill.
Barbash was sentenced to five years’ probation for conspiracy, assault, and grand larceny in 2017.
Keo also received probation, admitting to grand larceny and attempted assault.
Pascucci and Rosen were sentenced to spend weekends in jail for four months.
Barbash told The Sun that despite her past, she has cleaned up her life.
‘I own a spa and am just about to open a second,’ she said.
‘I’m a business owner now. And one day I would love to give my side of the story.’