SEATTLE — Strip-club owner Frank Colacurcio Jr. pleaded guilty Thursday to felony criminal charges in Seattle’s “Strippergate” campaign-finance scandal.
Colacurcio, 46, will pay a $10,000 fine and serve a year of probation under the plea deal. His 90-year-old father, Frank Colacurcio Sr., is expected to take an identical deal on Monday.
Those penalties are in addition to a $55,000 civil settlement approved Wednesday by the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, in which the Colacurcios admitted flouting campaign contribution limits by reimbursing at least 15 donors for contributions made to the re-election campaigns of Seattle City Council members in 2003.
The $39,000 in illegal donations came as the council was considering whether to approve a parking lot expansion for Rick’s, the Colacurios’ strip club in the Lake City neighborhood. Prosecutors said they found no evidence the council members knew the donations were illegal, and none was charged. The expansion was approved on a 5-4 vote following two earlier denials.
In 2006, the criminal charges — brought under a law that forbids making false statements to government agencies — were dismissed in King County Superior Court, but the state Supreme Court reinstated them.
In addition to Colacurcio Jr., one of the family’s associates, former lounge singer Gil Conte, entered a modified guilty plea to a misdemeanor conspiracy charge Thursday and agreed to pay a $1,000 fine.
Colacurcio Jr.’s lawyer, John Wolfe, said his client accepted the plea deal even though he “does not believe his conduct constituted a crime.”
For his part, Conte did a quick dance step for reporters and said, “I didn’t do nothing.”
Charges against another Colacurcio associate, Marsha Furfaro, were expected to be dropped in the case. Furfaro, 68, had been accused of funneling contributions through two daughters.
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