Ex-UNM president busted in Web sex ring

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Albuquerque police Thursday described in detail a complex online community of prostitutes and customers in which former University of New Mexico President F. Chris Garcia is accused of playing a leadership role.

Police arrested Garcia, 71, Thursday morning and booked him into the Metropolitan Detention Center. He is charged with promoting prostitution, tampering with evidence and conspiracy and was being held under a $35,000 bond.

Garcia has spent three decades with UNM serving as president in 2002-03 and currently holds the titles of visiting professor and distinguished professor emeritus in the political science department. He also has appeared frequently as a TV political analyst.

He was arrested on Thursday morning as police served search warrants on his home and campus office.

At an afternoon news conference Albuquerque Police Department Chief Ray Schultz identified Garcia as a moderator on the Southwest Companions website--essentially an online brothel--who used the moniker "burquepops."

On Sunday police arrested David Flory, a professor at Farleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, whom investigators allege owned the tightly controlled website built around a community of prostitutes and customers. Flory, who has a vacation home in Santa Fe, has since bonded out of jail charged with 40 counts of promoting prostitution.

Site designed to prevent infiltration

Police described a complex, private website where potential customers went through a vetting process involving reports from prostitutes of at least two paid sex acts to become "verified" members. Customers then worked up to "trusted" status through additional transactions with prostitutes who reported on details of the act and cash transaction.

Schultz said the site had about 1,400 members, 200 of them women, in addition to 15 prostitutes.

The women, recruited from other online sex sites, were not typical street prostitutes, Lt. William Roseman of the APD vice unit said at the news conference. Prices ranged from $200 an act to $1,000 for an hour, but the goal of the site was not income, he added.

"This organization was not set up to gain a lot of money and profit," Roseman said. "This was about sex."

Schultz said he was concerned about a "counterintelligence" section of the website where a database open to members contained information on APD vice operations including descriptions of officers and their cars and phone numbers used to set up stings.

According to Schultz, Cara Garrett started the business in 2005 and sold it to Mike Dorsey who sold it to Flory in 2009. Garrett was arrested Wednesday in Roswell and charged with intimidating a witness for posting on the site what police said was a threatening note aimed at a prostitute she believed helped in the investigation.

Dorsey also is in custody.

December arrest broke case open

APD got its first hint of the online business in December from a woman arrested for promoting prostitution, drug possession and child abuse, Schultz said. That led to an undercover operation that identified members and leaders of the organization, he said.

On Wednesday an informant told police "burquepops" was Garcia, and investigators learned he was actively trying to delete postings from the website linking him to the operation, the chief said.

Schultz also alleged Garcia was a member of the Hunt Club, seven members of Southwest Companions who helped recruit new prostitutes for the site from out of state and from other websites.

The site was based in Albuquerque and Santa Fe with "feeder routes" from other Southwest cities, Roseman said.

A UNM spokesperson released a statement saying the university is cooperating in the investigation.

Media reports which state the search warrants were served in connection with the multi-state online prostitution ring are deeply disturbing," Director of University Communications Susan McKinsey said. "It is important for all of us, our entire university family, that we get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible."

A later statement said current UNM President David Schmidly has temporarily suspended Garcia's privileges as a retired faculty member pending the outcome of the investigation and that Garcia's office had been secured.

Police said the investigation is continuing and that other arrests are likely. Racketeering charges also are pending.

It is not yet known if the case will expand into human trafficking as more details emerge on how some of the prostitutes came to New Mexico, Schultz said.

Roseman said it is apparently a coincidence that Garcia and Flory are both university professors.