Four people associated with the now-shuttered New Yorker Social Club — including its registered agent and promoter — were charged Wednesday with crimes related to running an illegal business.
Last summer, police ramped up enforcement near the downtown Salt Lake City club after a series of fights and shootings, including one that left a club patron dead.
The club, at 60 W. Market St., billed itself as a late-night private event space, where invited guests were served free alcohol provided by event organizers and could party into the early morning hours after bars close at 2 a.m.
That guests were invited and on a list, and weren’t buying alcohol, are important caveats, the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services told The Salt Lake Tribune in August 2023. If the club let just anyone in and was selling liquor, they would have needed a liquor license, which they didn’t have.
After a long-running investigation, Salt Lake City police contend that that’s exactly how the club was operating.
Charging documents filed Wednesday in 3rd District Court indicate that when a Salt Lake City police SWAT unit searched the club in August 2023, officers found 122 bottles of alcohol on the premises — 40 of them at the bar.
They also found credit card scanners and a cash till, the charges state.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The New Yorker Building on Market Street, on Tuesday, July 18, 2023, where the New Yorker Social Club is open for late-night weekend business.
“[The officer who served the search warrant] knew from past undercover investigation that this business operated as a bar/nightclub with no guest list and sold alcohol to customers,” charging documents state.
In interviews with investigators, employees confirmed the event space functioned as a nightclub. One employee, who’d been working at the New Yorker since September 2022, said that the club’s registered agent, Glen Ross Easthope, instructed her to charge patrons to enter the club. She said Easthope paid her in cash.
Another employee hired by Easthope told police “she would allow people to enter the nightclub as long as they paid,” charging documents state. Easthope’s son, who worked “behind the bar,” also told police he was paid in cash.
Easthope was charged with one count of money laundering, as well as one count of a pattern of unlawful activity. Both offenses are second-degree felonies. Promoter Kevin Smith faces the same charges.
Prosecutors also charged an employee who told investigators that the club did not have a scanner to check IDs, so they visually checked them before letting guests in. He “admitted that he sells marijuana because the business is a night club.”
When police searched him, they found a handgun and 41 grams of cannabis, charging documents state.
A fourth man who police found in the club was charged with having a stolen handgun.
Easthope did not respond to The Tribune’s request for comment Thursday. He has previously been convicted of operating a business without a license.
Smith and the other two men charged do not have attorneys assigned to their cases as of Thursday afternoon, so The Tribune was unable to reach them for comment.
When asked why nearly a year had passed between police officers serving the warrant and prosecutors filing charges, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said in a written statement that white-collar crimes are “complex investigations, oftentimes involving financial records and documents that can take months to work through.”
“As such,” Gill said, “we took the time necessary to make sure we had a full understanding of the case before we filed charges.”
(Salt Lake City Police Department) Salt Lake City police officers talk after executing a search warrant at the New Yorker Social Club on Aug. 26, 2023.
Deadly problems
Salt Lake City police said they were “very aware of” the New Yorker Social Club when The Tribune spoke with them last summer.
Spokesman Brent Weisberg said at the time that police had been working to curb violent crime “at/around” the club “for several months.”
The violent crime includes at least three shootings, including the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Halapain Moala on June 4, 2023. The suspect in that crime, 23-year-old Molitoni Vainuku, was charged with murder and later arrested in March.
Charging documents described Vainuku as a “documented Tongan Crip Gang member.” He allegedly shot Moala as the 22-year-old and his friends walked to their car from the club.
While this shooting and two others didn’t happen inside the club, they all occurred nearby outside — prompting the property owner to try to evict the club from his building in July. Officers also responded to multiple fights, including a stabbing, that summer.
(Salt Lake City Police Department) A mark left from a bullet that struck to the U.S. federal courthouse in downtown Salt Lake City during a shooting near Market Street early June 3, 2023.
“Tenant has failed to operate the Premises in a safe and secure manner,” an attorney wrote in eviction documents. “The risk of injury or death to persons and property damage is simply too high to allow Tenant to continue to operate at the Premises.”
The property owners were successful, and a judge ordered the building be vacated before Aug. 31, 2023.
Prior to the eviction, Salt Lake City police conducted “enhanced patrol operations” near the club. Between June 9, 2023, and July 15, 2023, there were more than 30 traffic stops and 50 “community contacts” with officers, netting 15 arrests, six seized firearms and an unspecified amount of marijuana and cocaine, according to a news release.
Salt Lake City police declined to say when enhanced patrol operations stopped at the location, noting they continued past June 17, 2023. A spokesperson said a police bike squad continues to patrol the area and said violent crime in the district where the club resides has decreased 21% year-to-date.
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