SANTA ANA — Four women pleaded guilty Wednesday for their part in a multi-state prostitution ring masquerading as an escort service.
Jodi Leigh Hoskins, 49, of Las Vegas, and Torri Wilkinson, 43, of Salt Lake City, pleaded guilty in Orange County Superior Court to money laundering of criminal activity and being an accessory after the fact, both felonies. They are scheduled to be sentenced May 21.
Aisha Kaluhiokalani, 45, and Andrea Smith Tizzano, 46, both pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of supervising a prostitute. Tizzano and Kaluhiokalani were both placed on one year of informal probation and sentenced to time already served behind bars — 54 days and 72 days, respectively.
They were all charged in 2019 by Orange County prosecutors following an investigation of the Companions Escorts LLC agency, which was characterized by law enforcement in court papers as a large-scale criminal organization operating call centers in four counties in three states.
The organization was operating in Orange and Riverside counties, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. The call centers sent money to Hoskins and Wilkinson, who were in charge of the overall operation, investigators said.
Employees in the call centers would “solicit females online to sex purchasers, communicate with the sex purchasers while posing as the female victims, and then dispatch the female victims to the `dates’ with the sex purchasers,” investigators said in court papers.
The prostitutes would collect a “door fee” of $200 and then perform sex acts for more money, investigators said. The profits would be divvied up among the others involved in the organization.
Tizzano and Kaluhiokalani managed and answered phones at call centers in Santa Ana and Palm Springs, investigators said when the women were arrested in 2019.
Undercover agents with the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force ran a sting operation. Investigators estimated at least 50 prostitutes worked in the ring. There were more than 15 bank accounts associated with the ring, investigators said.
Law enforcement intercepted a package mailed from Wilkinson to Hoskins that contained more than $50,000 in cash, investigators said.
As part of a plea deal, multiple felony counts of pimping, pandering, conspiracy and money laundering were dismissed.