The Associated Press
MARTINEZ, California- A married couple pleaded no contest to charges they ran a brothel, which happened to be across the street from a police station, authorities said.
Debra Watts, 52, will serve one year of home detention after pleading to three felony counts of pimping and pandering, prosecutor Jose Marin told the Contra Costa Times for its Tuesday edition.
Her husband, Ernest Watts, 63, pleaded to one misdemeanor count of maintaining a house of prostitution, Marin said.
A no contest plea means the defendant won’t fight the charges, and it is treated as a conviction.
Investigators said the couple ran the brothel for a year in an apartment located a few hundred feet (roughly 100 meters) from the Concord police station and used the Internet to solicit clients. Concord is about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of San Francisco.
Police raided the apartment in January of 2005, six months after an informant tipped them off in exchange for leniency in a pending fraud case, according to a search warrant affidavit.
Surveillance of the apartment revealed a Monday-through-Friday operation in which women would arrive by 10 a.m. and leave by 7 p.m. Men would enter and leave throughout the day, staying for about 30 minutes at a time, according to the affidavit.
The women charged $160(euro130) for every half-hour and Debra Watts would take half, according to the affidavit.
A third defendant, Michelle Secrist, 22, pleaded no contest to one misdemeanor count of prostitution.
The couple, who lived in Fairfield but recently moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, will be prohibited from working in any business related to prostitution as part of their probation. Prostitution is illegal is most of the United States, but legal in parts of Nevada.