How officials say law firm became prostitution front
Records show what’s behind Melbourne attorney’s charges
The mother told the judge she retained Melbourne lawyer John Gillespie in 2016 to help her daughter, who suffered from mental illness and drug addiction, get out of the Orange County Jail after weeks without a court date.
Her 23-year-old daughter, who faced drug, theft and credit card fraud charges, had insisted on hiring Gillespie, 71, after hearing from other inmates he would take someone’s case for just $500.
“She begged me and promised she would go to rehab,” the mother wrote in a 2019 letter to Circuit Judge Jon B. Morgan, who was the judge in the case against her daughter. “She told me that ‘John’ was going to help her and that he thought it would be better to get her out of the county that her drug use started.”
Instead, Gillespie moved her daughter to a Daytona Beach apartment, where her drug use escalated and she began dancing at a gentleman’s club, according to the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation. Gillespie had sex with the woman, who gave birth to a baby who tested positive for drugs, the mother said.
Gillespie’s treatment of the daughter was “consistent with grooming and a form a coercion typically exerted upon victims of human trafficking,” according to the MBI,
which released hundreds of pages of records from its investigation to the Orlando Sentinel in response to a public records request.
The documents reveal the extent to which authorities say the attorney’s law firm was a front for a prostitution enterprise. The records also confirm that Gillespie’s son, the notorious ex-Senate candidate and white nationalist Augustus Sol Invictus, lived at his home during the same period, though authorities have not accused him of being involved.
As a result of the MBI probe, Gillespie was arrested last week after agents say he agreed to pay an undercover agent posing as a 16-year-old girl $100 to have sex with her at an Orlando hotel. He was booked at the Orange County Jail on several charges, including racketeering and human trafficking for commercial sexual activity with a child under 18, and is being held without bond.
During his first appearance hearing, Gillespie vehemently denied the charges against him, claiming he was just trying to help the undercover agent he believed to be a teenage girl find a place to live. His son is being held at the same jail on out-of-state warrants after he was accused of stalking his wife.
Asked if Morgan referred the concerns of the mother who wrote him the letter to the Florida Bar, Ninth Judicial Circuit spokeswoman Karen Connolly Levey said it would be “inappropriate” for the judge to review a letter from a non-party to a case.
Florida Bar spokeswoman Susannah Lyle said the organization has an open disciplinary complaint regarding the recent charges against Gillespie but he is currently “a member in good standing, with no disciplinary history.”
‘You have to … control them’
The multi-agency task force’s investigation into Gillespie isn’t the first criminal probe of allegations against the attorney.
In December 2014, an agent with Homeland Security Investigations, which is
part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, interviewed a 15-year-old human trafficking victim who claimed she had sex with Gillespie in exchange for legal services he provided to her pimp, according to MBI records.
Reports provided by the MBI regarding the investigation were redacted, and the result of the probe is unknown.
The MBI’s probe began in December after a former employee of his law firm became an informant and told agents Gillespie sought to represent women accused of crimes in exchange for sexual intercourse or becoming their pimp.
Before she was arrested during an undercover police prostitution sting, the informant recruited women and girls into prostitution for the attorney, including a 15-year-old who Gillespie would pay for sex, according to the MBI.
“Gillespie’s ‘thing was always finding new girls and they had to be young, they have to be [16] or [15], because those are the ones that are worth the most money,’” the informant told investigators.
After intercepting his phone calls and surveilling his house, agents discovered Gillespie would use a “date phone” to schedule prostitution clients for women at his Melbourne home and post sexually suggestive photos of them online as escort advertisements.
Gillespie monitored and filmed sex acts between the women and their customers through cameras he installed inside his home, though some of them were “unaware” they were being taped, according to the investigation.
The attorney would also buy drugs like meth for the women from a drug dealer who wanted Gillespie to represent him in court, the records said.
“You have to be able to control them and that’s what the trick is,” Gillespie told the confidential informant in a phone call. “To control these people. And not have them [expletive] up on heroin and meth.”
MBI investigators found Gillespie often argued with the women he controlled over canceled clients and stolen drugs.
“This is killing me,” Gillespie said during a phone call with Mark Featherman, a man MBI officials accused of being a co-conspirator in the prostitution ring. “I have not worked in my office for a week because I have to babysit these drug addicts pieces of [expletive].”
Gillespie feared being caught
“Hello this is drug addicts incorporated; drug addicts and whore mongers.”
That’s how Gillespie answered the phone March 16. The call was from a man who planned to testify on Gillespie’s behalf as part of a custody investigation regarding Gillespie’s child.
The Florida Department of Children and Families had launched the probe after Gillespie tested positive for meth, cocaine and cannabis, which Gillespie denied using, according to the records.
Gillespie joked with the man about prostituting girls and said he would “gift” him one of the women who worked for him.
“She’s [22] years old, and she [expletive] like she invented it,” Gillespie said.
Though he spoke brazenly at times, Gillespie’s calls and texts also showed he feared being caught and would lash out at those he thought were threats to expose him.
On March 18, a woman who used to work for Gillespie texted him, demanding $50 in exchange for information about a phone he had lost.
She threatened to go to the press, DCF and the Florida Bar with everything she knew about him. Gillespie told her he would call the police and put her back in the jail he had gotten her released from.
“You are an ungrateful little [expletive] and your drug addiction is going to end up making you a dead prostitute drug addict,” Gillespie replied.
When the man who planned to testify for Gillespie posted a review of one of his prostitutes online, Gillespie and Featherman worried they would be “screwed” if linked to the crimes, records said.
“All they have to do is connect me to this house and I’m gone, it’s human trafficking,” Gillespie told Featherman.