8:57 PM Tue, Jan 15, 2008 | Permalink
Mike Watkiss
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He was wearing an ankle length mink coat and chomping on a cigar the size of an ax handle.
Joe Conforte had to be well into his 60's as he stood there surrounded by a large group of short, stocky men on a dark and narrow street in an ancient Sicilian fishing village known as Augusta,
He was the dirt poor prodigal son who had left this seaside town as a youth and now had triumphantly returned after hustling his way to a truly obscene fortune in America.
If the stogie and fur stole weren't proof enough of Joe's Conforte rather twisted American success story, the big bosomy redheaded girl--clinging to the old man's arm like wallpaper--sort of drove the point home like a hammer to the side of your head.
Subtlety was never part of Conforte's schtick. .
Indeed the flamboyant Joe Conforte had made millions and millions of dollars as the owner and operator of Nevada's most notorious brothel, the Mustang Ranch--at the time the oldest and largest legal whore house in America.
And now Joe was making his annual pilgramage back to the place of his birth--to share his good fortune with old friends and old-world family members--and more importantly to stroke his yearly check to the local Sicilian priest--for as I was to learn on that very memorable trip to the Mediterranean, pimp-master Joe Conforte took great pride in being the number one benefactor of the Augusta's Catholic church.
I first met Conforte in the late 80's when I was dispatched by my pimp-masters, my bosses--the producers of the t.v. show "A Current Affair," to go to Nevada to do a story on Conforte. It was a stupid story. Conforte, ever the showman, was very publicly talking about taking his business public and selling stock in his whore house. It was all stunt. Conforte was in deep trouble with the IRS at the time and this gag was clearly a way of diverting attention from his more serious issues. I did, however, come up with a couple of fairly funny lines for the story like "Blue Chip Brothel" bringing as whole new meaning to the term "bare market."
Like all pimps, Conforte was a pig--an exploiter and abuser of women--a reprehensible little con man who had gotten into the prostitution business by marrying an older woman who was already a well established madam. Joe, a hustling taxi driver, married this woman named Sally and together Joe and Sally Conforte built the Mustang Ranch into Nevada's largest and most illustrious house of ill-repute. It was a hell of a spread. Just outside Reno, the place had its very own exit off the freeway....more to come....mw
I've meet a lot of scoundrels in my day--but Joe Conforte was in a league all by himself. And like a lot of bad men that I have known over the years, Conforte obviously felt the need to make amends for his many misdeeds with a rather ironic gesture of contrition.
I don't know if he is still alive. Last time I heard, he was hiding out in South America after fleeing from federal tax evasion charges in Reno.
I was working as a reporter based in New York for the t.v. show A Current Affair when I first got to know Conforte.
The drunken Australians who ran ACA for Rupert Murdoch had assigned me to go to Nevada and do a story on the nation's most famous house of ill-repute. It seems Conforte was talking publicly about trying to sell stock in his whore house.
".....The Blue Chip Brothel....bringing a whole new meaning to the term "bare" market...."
I was already writing the story in my head!
My inebriated Aussie bosses knew that I was originally from Utah and--as far as they were concerned--with their blood-shot sense of American geography--everything west of New Jersey was just one big generic Western state.
"Utah's in Nevada!.....isn't it mate?"
...more to come.....mw
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