WoodFellas: Frank Colacurcio and His Million-Dollar Empire of Flesh

In the summer of 2006, a legendary duo stepped into the lights at a nude dance club on Aurora Avenue North in Shoreline, according to a witness. It was a show a lot of people, the cops especially, would like to have seen. But it wasn't the kind of bare-all act you'd advertise on the marquee out front: "Appearing today: Frank and Frankie, live at Sugar's."

Say this about the father-and-son team alleged to head Seattle's organic Mafia: They know that sex sells, especially when there's a law against it.

According to a 179-page FBI search warrant revealed in federal court last month— a possible prelude to a new indictment of the ex-con father and son—four Colacurcio nudie clubs, including Sugar's, took in altogether nearly $1 million a month during the 16-month period that investigators were counting.

The feds allege that the Colacurcios' key marketing element was one-on-one sex at the clubs, something the Franks deny, although the FBI says it has wiretaps and eyewitnesses to support its claims. "The business model at each of the four clubs is the same, the promotion and facilitation of prostitution," the FBI says in court documents.

At the family's most profitable club, Rick's in Lake City, as many as 80 fully nude dancers can work the floor and stages daily. The revenue pours in from the $10 cover and $5 price tag on nonalcoholic drinks, along with the condom machines in the restrooms. The Colacurcios also charge their dancers to work there, requiring up to $130 from each in nightly "rent." In one three-month period, they generated $3.8 million in rent revenues alone for the Colacurcios, the FBI says.

Some of the clubs' income, the feds say, was also skimmed off before it could be taxed and recorded, a scheme that worked so well the Colacurcios had to rent an apartment to store the cash. That could be one of the reasons father Frank was able to greet strangers at the door of his fenced-off $1.2 million Sheridan Beach home, as he did when a law-enforcement task force rolled up unannounced June 2, with a $10,000 roll of cash in his bathrobe pocket, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.

While son Frankie earns $15,000 a week at Rick's and takes a cut from the other clubs, Frank, because of the conditions of his felony convictions, is prevented from running the corporation and isn't on the books. Still, employees say, Frank is on the phone or drops in regularly, decked out in his gold neck chains and sporting a wad of bills. In court papers, the feds almost reverently say father Frank provides "guidance and oversight."

But is this familial act about to become a one-mobster show? Judging by insiders and the latest court papers, Junior's star is inevitably rising, while Senior's is inexorably flaming out.

The larger question is: Should either survive this latest investigation, will there even be an empire left for Frankie to run? The current investigation is already three years old, but "only just beginning," vows Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske.

"If we are successful," adds U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan, "the federal government is going to own those very valuable [$4 million] pieces of real property, and sell them for something other than strip clubs."

Of course, local cops have routinely made prostitution cases at the Colacurcio clubs for decades (10 years ago, police figures show, Rick's was already averaging 70 vice incidents annually)—in a sense, helping the family out with free advertising. And City Hall has effectively had a tolerance policy toward the Colacurcios, a lesser version of the see-no-evil tolerance policy that gave rise to Frank and others in the corrupt mid-1900s. To contain but not eliminate club sex today, police make periodic arrests of dancers, but not customers—and certainly not the Colacurcios.

In essence, the Franks have each become multi-millionaires with City Hall's tacit approval. But now, perhaps more for political than criminal reasons, it seems about time for another Colacurcio crackdown. And Frankie might have provided the excuse.