NY Post reports that a city employee took supporting her sons’ career choices to a criminal level, authorities said.
Department of Social Services employee Ann Marie Huggins helped her sons run a prostitution business — collecting proceeds, paying rent on the operation’s Harlem brothel and maintaining a car to ferry hookers to appointments, according to prosecutors.
Huggins, a 24-year staffer at the agency, took the reins of son Christopher Richards’ illicit enterprise after he was pinched on an unrelated robbery rap, officials alleged.
Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Erin Reid said that witnesses in the case heard Huggins say “that she wanted to keep her hands clean” because “she works for the city government.”
One witness allegedly saw Huggins demand payment from a pair of trafficked prostitutes.
When one hesitated, her other son, Triston Richards, who is also charged, grabbed and shook the woman until she produced the cash, prosecutors said.
Huggins, 55, also regularly called her son, Christopher, on Rikers Island, to keep him apprised of the venture’s financial health, authorities said.
In some of the calls, she reminded the 26-year-old, who also goes by Chris Cain, to be careful about what he says over the phone, the prosecutor told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Charles Solomon.
“She updates him that the girls are working, followed by calls where she tells these individuals I will violate you, I will expunge you,” Reid said at Huggins’ arraignment on one count each of promoting prostitution and criminal facilitation.
At one point during a Rikers call, Christopher tells his brother Triston “to beat those bitches,” the prosecutor said.
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