Lawsuit: X-rated South Shore club stripped dancers' tips

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Management at a Charleston strip club shook dancers' purses as hard as the women shook their booties, alleges a lawsuit.

Curves Gentleman's Club skimmed cash, sometimes hundreds of dollars at a clip, from dancers' tips and failed to pay them the minimum wage, contends the suit, recently filed by Melissa Acevedo.

Acevedo, who now lives in North Carolina, worked as an "entertainer" at the club at 2945 Arthur Kill Road between July and September of last year, her civil complaint said.

She alleges Curves has violated state Labor Law since April 2010 by keeping a sizable chunk of her tips and those of at least 40 other workers.

"Plaintiff Acevedo was not paid any hourly wage and received only some portion of her tips," the complaint alleges. "For example, if a customer tipped $300 for private dances, (Curves) would distribute $100 to the employee performing the dances and the remaining $200 would be retained by the club."

Customers were required to pay dancers for private dances, alleges the complaint.

"Upon information and belief, (Curves') customers reasonably believed that 100 percent of those tips would be given to employees," Acevedo's civil complaint alleges.

Curves wiggled cash out of dancers' wallets in other ways, the complaint charges.

Management "improperly deducted 'fines,' 'fees,' and miscellaneous improper surcharges," including house fees, from dancers' wages, alleges the complaint.

House fees were collected before each shift, depending on the night of the week, the complaint contends. The amount of those fees is not specified.

"Acevedo was forced to pay house fees and was not allowed to keep all of the tips she received from customers," the complaint contends.

The cash deductions were not similar to those employers typically take for pension, health and welfare benefits, insurance premiums, union dues, and the like, alleges the complaint.

The suit, recently filed in state Supreme Court, St. George, seeks unspecified monetary damages.

Acevedo's lawyer did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment on the suit. Attempts to obtain her telephone listing were unsuccessful.

A message left for a Curves manager was not immediately returned.

Curves has recently been in the news for other reasons.

In March of last year, Pedro Abad, an off-duty Linden, N.J., cop allegedly drove the wrong-way on the West Shore Expressway after leaving the club ^[1] and caused a head-on collision resulting in the death of two passengers in his car.

Abad's criminal defense lawyer, Mario F. Gallucci, seeks to test a sample of Abad's blood to determine if he was drugged with GHB,^[2] the so-called date rape drug, prior to the deadly crash on March 20, 2015. Gallucci has intimated he may have been drugged at the club.

Test results are pending.