Jail time for celebrity private eye who promoted prostitution and recorded it

June 14, 2019 Noah Goldberg

Vincent Parco leaves Brooklyn Supreme Court with his lawyer, Lawrence LaBrew, after being found guilty of promoting prostitution, unlawful surveillance, and dissemination of an unlawful surveillance image. Eagle photo by Noah Goldberg.

Vincent Parco (right) leaves Brooklyn Supreme Court with his lawyer, Lawrence LaBrew, after being found guilty of promoting prostitution, unlawful surveillance, and dissemination of an unlawful surveillance image. Eagle photo by Noah Goldberg

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Celebrity private detective Vincent Parco was sentenced to one to three years in prison Friday for promoting prostitution and unlawfully surveilling and disseminating video of a man having sex with two sex workers.

Parco was hired in 2016 by a man named Samuel Israel — who was at the time facing charges of sexually abusing a female relative. Israel was later convicted. He paid Parco $17,000 to get “embarrassing” video footage of the sex abuse victim’s husband in order to threaten her not to testify in his case.

Two separate times in December 2016, Parco — along with a woman he enlisted named Tanya Freudenthaler — lured the man into going to a Sunset Park hotel to have sex with prostitutes. They set up cameras in the hotel room.

Video of the sex acts were later found on Parco’s computer during the execution of a search warrant.

In the X-rated trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court, jurors watched an hourlong graphic video of the sex abuse victim’s husband sleeping with the sex workers at the hotel.

The victims’ names have been withheld for privacy.

Before sentencing, Assistant District Attorney Gwen Barnes referenced the Fatal Attraction case from 1989, when Parco sold Carolyn Warmus a gun and a silencer just days before Warmus shot her lover’s wife.

“It’s pretty obvious that when somebody requests a silencer they’re not using it to ward off intruders,” Barnes said.

“The defendant in this case helped a man target a victim of a sex crime to keep her from getting justice. He did this for profit. He did it out of greed and he did it in a manner that was particularly callous,” she said.

“[Parco] was hired by a sexual abuser who sought to silence the victim of a heinous crime, causing her and her family additional pain,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez in a statement. “A jury found him guilty of secretly recording an intimate encounter and with today’s sentencing, he has been held accountable. Sickening and shameful behavior such as this will not be tolerated in Brooklyn and will be vigorously prosecuted.”

Parco’s lawyers — for their part — tried to have his sentence delayed because, they said, Parco is in the middle of dental surgery and does not have any teeth. “Right now they took out all of his teeth,” said Lawrence LaBrew. “They can’t continue to second step of surgery until the gums go down.”

Supreme Court Justice Donald Leo denied the motion.

Parco’s other lawyer, Peter Gleason, said that they would move to have the sentence stayed pending appeal on Monday.

Gleason and LaBrew originally hoped to put on a defense that the arrest of Parco was politically motivated, and that the Brooklyn DA’s office was bowing to the interests of Williamsburg’s orthodox Jewish community, which they said was an important voting block.

“It’s about this man here pandering to the Jewish vote,” said Gleason, outside court after sentencing, pointing at Marc Feldman, executive assistant district attorney for special investigations. Gleason gave no explanation of how the case specifically panders to Brooklyn’s Jewish vote.

Supreme Court Justice Donald Leo did not allow them to use that defense, so LaBrew and Gleason instead tried to paint the victim as the true criminal — for cheating on his wife with prostitutes.

“This was an attempt to help a sex offender to evade justice. The evidence at the trial clearly demonstrated this,” said Leo at sentencing.

Barnes said upon Parco’s release from prison, he will have to come to court for a sex offender registration hearing.