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Woman Becomes Sex Billionaire
She began by selling phone sex, raked in millions of dollars, moved on to Internet gambling – and today Ruth Parasol is worth almost $2 billion. With a keen understanding of the power of the Internet to transform viewers' daily lives, Parosol has exploited two of mankind's basic urges – sex and the desire to gain sudden wealth by gambling – to build of fortune of $1.8 billion, putting her 164th on Forbes list of the richest Americans. In an in-depth profile of the 38-year-old lawyer, the Los Angeles Times writes that few outside the porn or gambling industries have heard of Parasol, a mother of two from Marin County who shuns publicity and lives in the Mediterranean tax haven of Gibraltar. She was described by friends as very, very smart, drop-dead gorgeous, a tough negotiator and a skillful investor who uses her legal training to navigate at the fringes of the law. And, according to a spokesman, she is determined to "remain fairly private." After a brief stint as a personal injury lawyer, Parasol joined her father in a business that handled billing for phone-sex lines and was described as a fixture at adult entertainment industry gatherings. "When I was coming up in '98 and '99, I would see Ruth at all the trade shows and we would hang out," Evan Horowitz, who heads an online porn network called XPays, told the Times. "I remember her being very bubbly and happy and nice. I should have dated her." She advised Seattle phone-sex entrepreneur Ian Eisenberg, who went on to mail fake "rebate" checks for $3.50 to millions of households. According to the Times, the fine print said that by cashing the checks, recipients agreed to pay as much as $29.95 a month for Internet service. The Federal Trade Commission sued and won an order for $17 million in reimbursement. "Parasol and an Eisenberg protege named Seth Warshavsky then invested millions of dollars in phone-porn companies that were sued by North Carolina and Nevada authorities for alleged improper billing and collection practices that included threatening to seize a person's property,"the Timers reported. Among her other ventures in the porn trade:
Although the Justice Department says Internet gambling is as illegal as it is popular, most of the $8.2 billion that analysts estimate the industry raked in last year came from the United States, the Times reported, adding that firms such as Parasol's Gibraltar-based PartyGaming, which has half the online poker market, escape U.S. jurisdiction by incorporating and operating in countries where gambling is lawful. Despite her vast wealth, which she shares with her husband Russell DeLeon, all is not rosy. The Times says that some legal experts say she risks arrest if she returns to the United States, and her company warned in paperwork before its initial public offering in the summer that a concerted U.S. effort could shut it down. So far, however, the Times notes that law enforcement agencies have shown no inclination to act. I. Nelson Rose, a professor at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, Calif., and an authority on Internet betting, told the Times said that Parasol's PartyGaming may have had some problems in the past. Given what he called the risky legality of PartyPoker, Rose said, "I don't know if she can ever come back to the U.S." On the other hand, he said, "it's great to be a billionaire."
Editor's note:
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