Jonas Gayer (Warzer Jaff)
They’ve got her surrounded.
Manhattan prosecutors have secretly arrested at least three key people in Anna Gristina’s alleged escort ring — her accused money launderer and two suspected high-price call girls — and are grilling them for evidence against her, The Post has learned.
Court transcripts and other records, along with sources familiar with the case, indicate that the two alleged prostitutes and a “laundry man” — identified by sources as 67-year-old shamed Russian-American accountant Jonas Gayer — have met privately with authorities to save their own hides and clinch a case against Gristina and her suspected cohort, Jaynie Mae Baker.
One of the women has admitted privately to having turned tricks for Gristina at her alleged East 78th Street “brothel,” a source said.
Prosecutors have engaged in hush-hush negotiations with alleged call girls Mhairiangela “Maz” Bottone, 30, and Catherine DeVries, 31 — who are both charged with prostitution, according to court documents — and with alleged launderer Gayer, who is identified only as “John Doe” in court and arrest records.
Gayer — a former IRS agent who sources said has known Gristina for years and is Facebook friends with her alleged co-pilot, Baker — was arrested without fanfare on a single charge of promoting prostitution in March 2010, court records reveal.
A charge of felony money laundering was later added.
Gayer previously pleaded guilty in a $10 million federal tax fraud case, in which it was alleged he cooked the books of a Brooklyn trucking firm to hide the evasion scheme. He served no jail time.
In the latest case against him, the balding, bespectacled, Soviet-born alleged launderer is charged with illegal acts dating as far back as 2003.
He has been on the DA’s radar at least since 2005, according to court records. .
Since his arrest, Gayer, who lives on Beekman Place, has remained free without bail, despite high charges, and appeared in closed court before Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan nearly a dozen times.
The transcripts of all the proceedings related to his case were ordered sealed by Merchan.
But one transcript obtained by The Post reveals that Gayer case was called before Merchan on Feb. 22.
Later that day, Gristina was arrested and her alleged brothel and her Orange County rescue-pig farm were raided.
Gayer was excused from appearing in court that day. But during the hearing, prosecutors asked for and obtained the search warrants for the “brothel” and farm.
“How are things going?” the judge asks, referring to “The John Doe Matter.”
“Going well,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Roper responds. “He’s doing well and he has been in touch with us.”
Asked today if he was Gristina’s money man, Gayer told The Post, “I don’t think so. It’s not true.”
He admitted being Facebook friends with Gristina and Baker, but claimed he’s never met the women.
“We have a mutual acquaintance,” he said. “A man named Bruno Jamais. He’s a restaurant owner.”
The suave, French-born Jamais worked at the famed Daniel before opening his own Upper East Side eatery, Restaurant Club — which quickly gained a reputation as a hot spot for young women looking to land one of the wildly wealthy sugar daddies who frequented the pickup place.
Jamais could not be immediately reached for comment.
Transcripts for the arraignments on the two alleged high-priced hookers, DeVries and Bottone, who are also free without bail, indicate they had met with prosecutors and intended to meet again.
The two women were indicted in the alleged ring on Feb. 24, two days after Gristina’s arrest.
DeVries, a tall, blue-eyed brunette, was arrested on Feb. 27.
Bottone, who has long, dark blond hair and speaks with a British accent, was arrested on March 2.
A source close to the investigation confirmed that both women are cooperating in the case.
Both have worked for Gristina for some time, sources said.
“There were appointments in that apartment that [Gristina] booked,” a source close to one of the women said, referring to the alleged brothel on East 78th Street.
Meanwhile yesterday, Gristina’s new defense attorney, Gary Greenwald, said his client is considering pleading guilty to the one charge against her — felony promoting of prostitution.
Even if prosecutors were successful at winning the maximum sentence on such a plea — at least 2 1/2 years — she’d serve only as little as a year at an upstate women’s prison before being sprung on work release as a nonviolent first offender, insiders in the case noted.
“She’d be near her home and family [in upstate Monroe], she doesn’t give up anybody, she doesn’t make any enemies,” one insider told The Post. “That’s how she’s leaning right now.”
Gristina, meanwhile, is working to secure a $2 million bail bond — collateralized by her husband, her sister and, in largest part, by the TriBeCa loft of defense attorney Peter Gleason, who stepped down as her lawyer yesterday to remove any conflict of interest in posting her bail.
Lawyers for both alleged hookers declined to comment.
Carlos Martir Jr., who represents Gayer, did not return calls for comment.
Martir has represented shamed New Jersey lawyer Paul Bergrin, an accused murderer and drug runner who also has pleaded guilty to running a New York City prostitution ring.