Big Trouble

Within a year, Haney's Colorado Companions was the biggest escort agency in the Rocky Mountains, operating around the clock, seven days a week, with more than a dozen employees.

"He had changed the whole industry for Denver," says one former business associate. "Kind of made it more upscale, kind of made it nicer. He tried to be, like, the Playboy of escort companies."

Colorado Companions "was the premier elite service," April remembers. "We were the first ones to get pics on the web. The business was always there. I didn't have any downtime." Within a few weeks of starting, she was making $3,000 to $5,000 a week and working close to forty hours. That Christmas, Haney gave all of his employees expensive gift baskets filled with posh body lotions and powder puffs.

Escort appointments could be reserved by the hour, or even by the weekend; clients would leave the money as a "tip" on a dish or tray by the door. Escorts got to keep two-thirds of the money, with a third going to the agency. And at the end of every day, the girls were required to make their drop to Haney.

"After I worked for him for a while, I wouldn't make my drop every day," April says. "I would drop every couple days, and he was fine with that."

Haney "raised the bar" on what was expected of a well-run agency, according to one associate. In the beginning, Colorado Companions operated out of Haney's home, where "phone girls" would answer calls from 9 a.m. to 3 a.m. Haney's employees learned how to work the phones right; their job was to make potential clients feel comfortable, and to also make sure they weren't cops. And a nearby hotel made arranging meetings easy.

April remembers Haney as "all business" in those days, and says he took many measures to ensure his employees' safety when they went on the rare outcall.

Even though she was happy with the money, April quit in February 2001, after just a few months on the job, when her marriage became too chaotic.

Haney quickly filled her position and soon added a dozen more employees. By 2003, he was buying full-page ads in Buzz magazine, a glossy successor to Go-Go, touting his agency as "prompt and discreet," with three in-call locations spread throughout the city and beauties by the names of Hazie, Taj and Maya. Sometimes the girls actually looked like their pictures; sometimes the glamour shots resulted from the photographer's clever use of angles and lighting.

Now living in a nice loft in the Baker neighborhood, Haney had found business success, but he still craved legitimacy. Larry Flynt might be a self-proclaimed smut-peddling scumbag, but his offices were corporate and his business on the up-and-up. Haney, by comparison, was still relegated to the shadows because of the nature of his adult-entertainment niche.

He decided to get away from the life, and headed for Costa Rica with plans to retire there and explore his spiritual side. He was curious about Eastern religions and had a tattoo of the Buddha etched on his back. He'd gone to the Burning Man festival and taken pictures of the freaky, naked revelers cavorting in swirls of gray dust. He'd always hoped that the path of excess might lead to the palace of wisdom -- and now it seemed that the palace might be a tropical paradise.

But there was trouble in paradise: Haney left one of his phone girls in charge of Colorado Companions, and within a month, money stopped flowing into his bank account. He got word from other employees that the woman he'd entrusted with day-to-day dealings was now stealing money from the company. Haney returned to Denver to set things back in order.

He was bored, anyway. He ran the woman out of town, got Colorado Companions back on track and started thinking big. His next plan was a project called X411, a coast-to-coast service that would function as an online gateway and trusted source of information for every type of adult service imaginable in a particular market -- like a Zagat guide for the sexually ambitious. He did a soft launch for Colorado with the now-defunct www.denver.x411.com, buying ads in local publications that touted such features as interviews with a "Vixen of the Month," printable maps and coupons to spas or strip clubs, and consumer reviews on everything from "best female provider" to the "best nude retreats."

But Haney couldn't find investors to launch the website nationally, and he eventually gave up on his X411 scheme. Still, he knew that there was a lot of money -- legal money -- to be made in multimedia adult services. And he liked to spend that money. When Haney would take the occasional trip out of town, he "went all out," a former friend remembers, sometimes spending $3,000 in one night on booze, limos and drugs. Haney liked cocaine and ecstasy, but never did them during business hours, he says.

"He wanted everyone to know that he owned Colorado Companions," remembers another friend. "He threw around a ton of money. I used to party with him all the time, and I never spent a penny. It was always him. He'd invite us out to P.T.'s Gold Club, Rise. It was always table, bottle service. He picked up everything. He's a huge guy, and -- this is his words -- 'The only way a guy like me is going to get pussy is if I pay for it.' And he did it by owning an agency, and he did it by throwing money around."