Stinging the Sex Rings

Prostitution, besides being illegal and immoral, is expensive. To cut the aftertax cost of illicit sex in Chicago's suburbs, a firm called National Credit Service offered businessmen phony invoices that they could use to claim false tax deductions, as well as the privilege of credit-card payment. Lucrative though its business was, the firm closed up shop last week with the announcement that it had been an FBI sting. "We got everything we hoped for, and more," said Chicago FBI Special Agent Bob Long. Officials predict that the sting, dubbed Operation Safe Bet, could produce indictments of as many as 75 people, including nightclub owners, mid-level mobsters and police, once a grand sifts through hundreds of hours of taped conversations recorded by the FBI.

Operation Safe Bet got its start when National Credit's owner, pressed by racketeers for "street taxes," turned in fear to the FBI. Apparently the FBI did no soliciting and acted primarily as a middleman between call-girl rings and their customers, a less active role than the agency assumed in the drug sting of John De Lorean. Observed a happy FBI agent last week: "I don't think we'll have to worry about entrapment with this one."