2006-2008: Shannan Gilbert, Alex Diaz and Michael Pak work for escort services run by Joseph Ruis out of NJ.
Shannan, an escort, meets both Diaz and Pak, drivers, during this time period.
2007: Shannan is arrested in a prostitution sting while working in NJ for one of Ruis' escort businesses.
2008: Hudson County PO begins a year long investigation into Ruis' businesses starting w World Class Party Girls. This investigation utilizes undercover agents, wire tapping and confidential informants. HCPO allocates a great amount of resources into this investigation and quickly discovers that Ruis' businesses spider web out into much more than one escort service. Ruis has three separate escort services, a limo service, a kebab restaurant and various other LLCs. He is laundering 3 million a year (and that is only the cash he cleans). HCPO find records of clients paying tens of thousands of dollars for single bookings. In one instance a client paid 100k. I don't care how many escorts and shish kebabs you can pile into a limo for a client, it's not going to add up to 100k.
July 2009: HCPO obtains a warrant and raids Ruis' homes and businesses.
Ruis is arrested.
He makes cash bail shortly thereafter and is released.
The charges in the case are filed:
First-degree money laundering,
N.J.S.A. 2C:21-25;
Third-degree promoting prostitution, N.J.S.A. 2C:34-1b(2);
Third-degree conspiracy to promote prostitution and distribute cocaine, N.J.S.A. 2C:5-2, N.J.S.A. 2C:34-1b(2), N.J.S.A. 2C:35-5a(1), and N.J.S.A. 2C:35-5b(1);
First-degree leading a narcotics trafficking network.
Shannan Gilbert (along with one other name I've seen in threads but have been unable to verify) is listed as Ruis' co-defendant in this case.
April 2010 - Ruis is arraigned, still free on bail.
May 2010 - Shannan Gilbert goes to Oak Beach.
June 2010 - Ruis goes to court, pleads way down to 5 years, serves 2 years and is released.
From the beginning we have been fed the narrative that Shannan Gilbert was working independently - that she was no longer involved with Ruis.
But this information is inserted into the narrative by Michael Pak, and only Michael Pak, who time after time in interviews and depositions states that both he and Shannan were working independently on a regular basis.
According to Pak, he acted only as a driver, Shannan posted her own ads using her own phones, negotiated her own client fees and paid Pak a percentage for driving her. Pak had no role other than driving. He did not know the clients and it was only Shannan who booked them.
The reality is that we do not know if Pak and Shannan were working independently and we do not know if they'd severed ties with Ruis.
We especially don't know this as it pertains to the night of Friday, April 30, 2010, when Pak claims Brewer, a man who neither he nor Shannan knew, called Shannan on her phone for an outcall 2 hours away to OB, a place neither he nor Shannan had ever been.
More according to Pak and only Pak:
he and Shannan sat in his vehicle in midtown Manhattan for hours that Friday night with no work, refreshing posts on Craigslist, with Shannan becoming increasingly upset. (Shannan's emotional disposition will become a recurring theme in Pak's accounts.)
Pak then claims Shannan had a quick outcall somewhere in the neighborhood.
Pak claims not to know where or with whom but that she walked there herself and within 20 minutes was heading back to Pak's vehicle during which time they communicated via phone.
Just as a reminder: one fact that we DO KNOW is that Joseph Ruis was free at this time, his trial was a month away and Shannan was listed as a co-defendant.
I'd be very interested to know what this 20 minute meeting was about, who it was with or if it even happened.
Phone records are objective fact.
Pak plays dumb but he is absolutely not dumb.
He knows phone records cant be argued away.
He's criminally intelligent - it's why he's always so careful in his accounts regarding location - he never crosses state lines - and how he knew that the people he was trafficking from Southeast Asia could claim religious asylum if caught.
So if he knows there will be calls that show up btwn himself and Shannan at a time he claims they were sitting for hours side by side in his vehicle, he better have a reason.
It's the same as when he knows a bunch of phone calls are going to show up in Oak Beach from his phone to Brewer (who he'd never met), Brewer to him, and him to Shannan, at a time when he was supposedly sitting outside the home of Brewer while Shannan was supposedly inside providing sexual services.
Pak comes up with a highly detailed story about CVS, playing cards, lube and a phone exchange w Shannan in which she angrily exclaims "Fine, I'll find my own way home!"
Pak's account of this exchange serves 3 purposes:
1- it implies that Shannan was emotionally off-kilter that night - a theme that Pak peppers throughout every bullsht word he vomits out of his mouth about Shannan from the start - she was highly emotional and unpredictable, she was bipolar and refused to take her medicine, she was an alcoholic and constantly sipped from a fast food soda cup which she mixed liquor into, she was a drug addict and did coke and ecstacy often, she was paranoid, she often got lost when trying to find her way out of clients' buildings - all these statements are systematically shot down by Ray in the deposition.
2 - it provides Pak with an explanation for the flurry of calls that took place btwn him and Brewer and him and Shannan while he was supposedly parked outside Brewer's residence on a routine independently booked outcall: he was calling because Shannan, in her emotional instability, told him to leave and he wanted his money.
3 - it lays down the foundation for the reasoning he will later use when he claims he left Oak Beach without Shannan: She herself told him to leave so finally he did, assuming she found her own way home.
We do not know anything that was said in those phone calls, where Brewer, Shannan or Pak were while the calls were made or what they were doing.
In the same way, Pak volunteers the fact that Shannan has this very short appointment before going out to Oak Beach.
Imo, this means that something is in the phone records that will show she was not in the vehicle with Pak at certain points; that they were calling eachother from different locations.
I think wherever Shannan went during that period of time is very important and linked to the events that occurred in OB.
Whatever that appointment was, it wasnt a sex related meeting.
If i had to guess, she was either picking up product from Ruis' people to take out to Oak Beach or meeting with law enforcement as a CI.
Or some overlapping gray area in which both are true.
If we refer to the charges laid out in the trial scheduled to begin the very next month: "conspiracy to promote prostitution and distribute cocaine" - that's one charge - it's not promoting prostitution and also distributing cocaine separately - it's conspiracy (which to me always translates to RICO) to promote prostitution as a means of moving large amounts of cocaine.
These was conspiracy and distribution charges - these were not escorts and drivers bringing eightballs as party favors.
They were moving distribution weight.
But, according to Pak, neither he nor Shannan were working for an agency, neither he nor Shannan knew Brewer and the night was just a simple outcall for sex.
In the words of my grandfather:
"Do you know what chewed up grass is?"
As an aside, it's also of interest to note that when John Ray deposes Pak for the civil case against Hackett, he asks Pak what he did after leaving Oak Beach after supposedly searching for and failing to find Shannan. Remember, Pak has rambled on for paragraphs at a time about how Shannan and he were working independently so far in this deposition. What did Pak do after he left OB early May 1 without Shannan?
He answers that he went to meet another agency driver at a Dunkin Donuts in Queens to pick up cash, he then purchased a Green Dot card and transferred that cash to the Green Dot card to send to the agency - the agency which neither he nor Shannan worked for according to him.
Ray, disappointingly, does not push this issue, I can only assume, bc it does nothing for his case against Hackett.)
To get back to the main point, Shannan Gilbert was listed as a co-defendant in a large case against Joseph Ruis, scheduled to begin the month after she went out to OB.
Ruis is indicted April 2010 (still free). Shannan goes missing May 2010.
Ruis goes to court June 2010.
Shannan is not there.
Ruis makes a deal to get a 5 year sentence, and is released after 2.
I think it is very important to understand that, regardless of Pak's attempts to manipulate the narrative, the objective inarguable truth is that Shannan Gilbert was not only involved in organized criminal activity, she died exactly one month before she was scheduled to testify as a co-defendant in a trial against a far reaching very large organized criminal enterprise.
Joseph Ruis wasn't making his money from hundred dollar outcalls and shish-kebabs.
He had clients on record for "services" for up to 100k.
That's no regular outcall.
That is using escorts and drivers to move product.
And that year long investigation that took place and led to Joseph Ruis' arrest utilized many resources... including Confidential Informants.
If you're Shannan Gilbert and you get picked up in a sting in NJ and the Prosecutor's Office comes to you and tells you your employer is at the center of an investigation that goes far beyond an escort service and you're going to face those charges with him...unless you cooperate, in which case you'll get immunity, what would you do?
If you're Joseph Ruis, out on bail, a month away from a serious case against you, and you find out one of your employees, not just any employee but the one listed as co-defendant in your case has made a deal w the State...what would you do?
www.nbcnewyork.com
