Champagne Room Remorse? Men Claim Foul Play in Giant Strip Club Bills

Last December, a Miami visitor was in town for a sailing regatta when someone recommended that he go to Playmates strip club, an adult entertainment joint tucked between a storage facility and a recording studio off Bird Road in Coral Gables. Around 8 p.m., he headed to the club to enjoy a drink and a few dances before the sailing event the next day.

He recalls that he sat down at a bar inside the full-nudity club, next to a scantily dressed exotic dancer, and ordered a cocktail. He claims she invited him to a VIP room in the back, where she promised a dance and cocaine to keep the party going. He remembers following her.

What happened next that evening on December 28, 2021, is a blur, he claims.

In a lawsuit filed against Triple Vision Inc. AKA Playmates Strip Club, David Chapin accuses the club’s workers of dropping an “unknown substance” into his drink and drugging him to the point where he was rendered incapacitated as $40,000 was racked up on two of his credit cards for dances, entertainment fees, tips, cocktails, and other charges. Chapin says that when he eventually “came to” the following morning in a room inside the club, his belongings were scattered everywhere.

“His pants, jacket, phone, keys, and wallet were spread out on the floor," the lawsuit, filed on September 30, reads. "He does not remember anything that happened after first arriving at the Playmates establishment.”

What Chapin alleges in the lawsuit is nothing new, his attorney, Gary Ostrow, claims. 

"It's a continuous ongoing scheme, and we're talking about more than one club," Ostrow tells New Times. "And they get away with it on a high scale. It's unbelievable."

Over the past several years, Ostrow has represented a handful of men in cases across South Florida who claim dancers at local strip clubs plied them with ketamine, MDMA or other drugs while tens of thousands of dollars were charged on their credit cards. He claims many of these cases get swept under the rug and aren't litigated because the men feel humiliated or are married and fear publicizing the scam.

As for Playmates, the club's former owner Richard Stanton says the accusations are demonstrably false. He says that on that raucous December night, Chapin personally authorized the charges in phone conversations with his credit card companies — calls which were documented in a club manager's notes.

Stanton, who also happens to be an attorney, says he personally met with Chapin to discuss the bill and that Chapin's story was quite different at that time. For one, Chapin didn't claim to have been drugged, according to Stanton. The customer was instead worried about charges showing up on his corporate credit card and made a deal to wire the club a chunk of the bill in exchange for reversal of those charges, Stanton recalls.

In response to a demand letter Ostrow sent in February laying out the accusations, Stanton wrote that "there may be some hyperbole in my response, but considering the facts, as well as the law, your... letter may contain the most ludicrous accusations we have ever received.”

Stanton also emphasized, seemingly in response to Chapin's mention of cocaine use, that the club has its anti-drug policy plastered on posters all over its walls. "I assure you the business does just fine without allowing that type of activity, which is obviously not only illegal but destructive to the club," Stanton argues.

Playmates was recently sold to RCI Hospitality, AKA Rick's Cabaret, a publicly traded company with a large portfolio of adult entertainment venues.

Ostrow has fielded claims against strip clubs dating back to at least 2017 when he took on the case of a client suing Vixen's Gentlemen's Club in Davie. The client claimed he awoke one morning from an evening at the club to find he had been charged $17,000 for drinks, entertainment, and other services. The man claimed that the cocktails served to him that night were "chemically altered" to get him looser with his wallet.

That case ended in October 2018 after the parties reached a mediation agreement.

In 2020, Ostrow represented a man in a lawsuit against Scores Palm Beach, in which the man accused dancers of buying expensive bottles of champagne and charging $46,000 and $24,000 on two of his credit lines while he was heavily intoxicated. The man, who also claimed to have been drugged, says he woke up at 10:30 the next morning in the club, thoroughly confused and surrounded by topless women, with his belongings scattered around him.

Scores maintains the customer's claims, which were filed in Palm Beach County court, are frivolous.

"When the fun was over, plaintiff had buyers' remorse and is now seeking the return of money that he spent for entertainment services which he received, in an attempt to extort [Scores] with salacious allegations of being drugged," Scores' motion to dismiss states.

Ostrow is no longer representing the plaintiff in the Scores case. Recently, two more men joined the pending Palm Beach County lawsuit, saying they were victims of comparable scams at Scores.

Filed in Miami-Dade County court, the recent lawsuit against Playmates, similar to Ostrow's past cases, alleges that the club and its employees size up customers, target seemingly rich men or tourists, and drug them before charging exorbitant amounts of money on their credit cards.

In each of Ostrow's cases, the credit card companies refused to reverse or refund the charges, citing the fact that the men were present at the venues where the bills were accrued.

The alleged scams are reminiscent of the high-profile saga of a group of dancers from a New York strip club, also named Scores, who were criminally charged with drugging and scamming wealthy clientele. The tale inspired the movie Hustlers starring Jennifer Lopez and Belcalis Almanzar, better known by her stage name Cardi B.

Stanton tells New Times that before Ostrow came knocking, Playmates had never been sued over anything like this. He claims it appears that some of the allegations from Ostrow's past lawsuits are being recycled and used in the case against Playmates.

"We are going to fight these allegations to the end," Stanton says.