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Old 10-07-2002, 12:53 AM  
Brown Bear
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Join Date: May 2002
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Angelika Potter, an entrepreneur who used to run an escort agency in Frederick, MD, was one of the first entrants into the Internet marketplace in the U.S. She says that the Web instantly tripled the income of her then one-year-old business back in 1996, when she started posting color photos of her girls on a website. "We had the pictures up there in 1996, when this was not even heard of," says the German-born Potter, who goes by the name "Steffie" on her (very) X-rated website, Steffiecam.com. "This is all about marketing." Indeed, advertisements in the City Paper, which can run $150 per week, are limited in their distribution, and, more importantly, they do not boast photos of the attractive escorts in all sorts of compromising positions. Another advantage is that "the Internet attracts people who have a computer, so they tend to be more upscale," says Veronica, another local madam.

Sexpreneurs are often on the cutting edge of business and on the razor's edge of the law. Potter still runs Steffiecam, which charges a $99.95 annual subscription fee for full access to "artistic" images and live video feeds, but her escort agency, Corporate Affair, was effectively dismantled in July 1999 when the police raided her business and made a copy of the agency's client list.

In November, Potter paid a nominal $100 fine for running a bawdy house in a plea agreement that stipulated that her seized property would be returned. But problems started brewing when word got out that law enforcement officials maintained a copy of Corporate Affair's client list in a safe, resulting in a flurry of lawsuits from various news agencies - including the Associated Press and the News Post - seeking to gain access to the company's little black book under the Freedom of Information Act. When asked if there were any business barons on her list, Potter brusquely retorts, "You know that we are in court with this; I am not going to talk about it. But you gotta look at it this way: If you are someone who is known in the community and you are married, you are not going to just go into a bar and pick up a girl."
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