ANYTHING ho’s!
Says ‘many ir s’ had keys to $600 sin den
It was the hottest love shack in town. Anna Gristina (right) told The Post that she frequently allowed her pals — some married, some with “sugar daddies” — to have s t eamy t r ysts at t he $600-a-month Upper East Side apartment where prosecutors claim she ran her high-end brothel. “A lot of people had keys,” she said.
It wasn’t just Anna Gristina’s girls who were giving the brothel bedsprings a workout.
The alleged hockey-mom madam — who prosecutors claim was using the $600-a-month sublet on East 78th Street for her high-end operation — said she lent the pad to a multitude of mistresses who used the home as a crash pad to have secret sex with their filthy rich sugar daddies.
“A lot of people have keys to that place,” Gristina, 44, said during Thursday’s exclusive jailhouse interview with The Post from Rikers Island where she is being held in lieu of $2 million bond.
Gristina admitted she has rented the place out to friends who cheat on their beaus and use it to “entertain their sugar daddies, girls who have boyfriends or husbands, who need a place to go where they can be with these other men.”
But she completely denied ever running a hooker operation out of that apartment.
Gristina claimed the cheating beauties were likely the parade of people neighbors have said they’ve witnessed coming and going from the apartment at all hours.
“That’s probably who they’re seeing — I don’t know,” Gristina said. “But I do let girls use it.”
The apartment was also a crash pad for sultry out-of-towners — many of them former models — who would stay at the apartment for weeks at a time, sources said.
On Rikers Island, Gristina admitted that “friends” from other cities were often allowed to use it as their New York City base in exchange for cash.
“We let friends use it — people who come to New York, who need a place to stay. They pay us and we let them use it,” she said.
Gristina says she is stunned that prosecutors claim that she — or anyone — would run a high-end hooker ring out of the tiny onebedroom pad.
“Have you seen it? It’s hardly luxurious. It’s a small place — no frills — that we’ve had for five or six years,” she said.
Those familiar with Gristina’s operation said that using a seedy in-call apartment to service her high-end clients would be out of character.
While other infamous flesh peddlers, like Jason Itzler and Kristen Davis, operated full-service porno palaces, Gristina typically worked with a small stable of women who would rendezvous with clients at high-end hotels.
On Rikers Island, Gristina declined to address prosecutors’ claims that she has been running a high-end prostitution service for 15 years.
She did, however, say, “If I’m such a big, high-profile madam, making all this money, and they had to investigate me for five years, why did they arrest me on a single promoting prostitution charge?’’
Gristina, who lives nearly twohours from the apartment in upstate Monroe, rarely came into New York City, and when she did, the mother of four was shadowed in 2001 by a burly bodyguard who was actually a moonlighting NYPD detective.
Sylvan “Sly” Francis worked for Gristina when he was also assigned to the Manhattan district attorney’s squad assisting prosecutors with investigations.
That same DA’S Office spent hours grilling Gristina last week, digging for dirt on 10 New York City power brokers.
“Everything that’s going on right now — that’s between the DA’S Office and her,” said Francis outside his Elizabeth, NJ home yesterday.
“I have no part in it. I really don’t have anything to say about what’s going on in this case.”
Sources say prosecutors are now probing Francis’ relationship with Gristina.
The 54-year-old Francis retired from the NYPD in 2002 after spending a decade in the department.
A highlight from his tour of duty was working as a driver for a first deputy commissioner under Ray Kelly.
Additional reporting by Frank Rosario