Stanford Law Grad Gets Home Detention for Unpaid Taxes on Escort Earnings
Stanford law graduate Cristina Warthen has been sentenced to one year of home detention and ordered to pay $243,000 for failing to pay taxes on money earned running an escort service.
U.S. District Judge James Ware also sentenced Warthen to three years of probation and said she could not continue to advertise her escort services during that period, the San Jose Mercury News reports. He imposed the advertising restriction after prosecutors said Warthen continued to promote herself on the Internet as a high-priced escort while awaiting sentencing for failing to pay taxes on $133,000 earned as a prostitute. Warthen had pleaded guilty to the tax charge.
“Warthen gained notoriety when she was busted as a jet-setting call girl who sold her services to pay off her Stanford Law School debts,” the newspaper says. “She got her law degree from Stanford in May 2001, but quickly began to run a steamy website with offers to jet off for liaisons with clients in cities around the country, including New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C.”
The plea agreement originally called for Warthen to pay $313,000. She later asked the court to reduce the amount because her former husband, the co-founder of Ask Jeeves, had lost money in the stock market downturn and would not be able to pay the full $350,000 she expected to get in a divorce settlement.
