I’m no pimp!
A former top Manhattan prosecutor says turncoat hooker Rebecca Woodard’s claims that she was forced to keep turning tricks while working undercover for the district attorney — handing the cash over to the lawman — are an outrageous lie.
“At no time was Ms. Woodard counseled to engage in illegal activities to further the investigation,” said former Assistant DA Mark Crooks, who used Woodard as a confidential informant in a 2008 probe of Hockey Mom Madam Anna Gristina.
To the contrary, Crooks, now a Maryland federal prosecutor, told The Post that Woodard simply refused to stop prostituting herself.
Officials also scoffed at Woodard’s claims that she was wired with recording devices around her torso and chest before being sent into potentially dangerous situations where the wire might be discovered.
Former Manhattan ADA Jonathan Lenzner, for one, said the antiquated, Hollywood-like body-wiring scheme was way off base.
“It’s not even close to being factually accurate,” he said.
“In the DA’s office, technological advances allowed us to use recording devices that are much more discreet,” Lenzner said, noting that they can be contained in key fobs, cell phones and purses, or made to look like part of clothing, like a button.
“The recording device would never have a cord — you don’t need one.’’
And Woodard, several sources said, continued to see her well-heeled clients behind the backs of her DA handlers, putting the probe in jeopardy.
Crooks confirmed that in a statement to The Post, noting, “I, along with my fellow district attorneys and investigators, repeatedly admonished her to refrain from engaging in any further commercial sex whatsoever.”
As The Post reported Monday, Woodard — who says she was an Eliot Spitzer hooker — claims in her tell-all, “Call Girl Confidential,” that she was ordered to “keep breaking the law,’’ and maintains the ADA “was my pimp’’ who ordered her to turn over the money.
She does not name Crooks, but gives enough identifying clues that The Post was able to confirm he was the ADA to whom she referred.
“The book falsely portrays a rogue ADA taking questionable and unethical steps to further this investigation,” Crooks said.
“To the contrary, the investigation was conducted with caution, with oversight from supervisors in the front office of the District Attorney’s Office, and with a view that all actions would be subject to scrutiny when disclosures were made to the court and defense counsel in accordance with the law.”
He called Woodard’s claims “gross misrepresentations about my role as a prosecutor assigned to investigate an escort and money laundering ring.”
Another law enforcement source involved in the case noted that Woodard was ‘’explicitly instructed not to continue working in the sex trade’’ noting that ‘’aside from being sound law enforcement practice, it’s illegal.”
When Woodard complained that she needed to work to support her lifestyle — including her pricey Upper West Side pad — she was given a stipend to cover living expenses, several sources said.
But the cash-hungry hooker allegedly couldn’t stay away from the tens of thousands she hauled in from deep-pocketed clients, her handlers said.
“She’d get caught, and then say things like, ‘Oh, well, the client just wanted to talk, there was no sex,'” recalled one investigator.
Woodard claims in her book that prosecutors approached her after madam Kristin Davis’ 2008 arrest, looking for information.
In reality, DA officials said, it was Woodard who contacted them, showing up “of her own initiative.”
Crooks said Woodard’s claim in the book that she was denied access to a lawyer is also a crock.
“She was repeatedly reminded – and encouraged – to retain a lawyer to represent her during the investigation,” he said.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Manhattan DA Cy Vance, who previously declined comment on Woodard’s claims, Monday came out in support of Crooks, calling him ‘’a well-regarded public servant.’’
“The allegations reported against former ADA Mark Crooks find no support in information known to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office,’’ the spokesman said.
Neither Woodard nor her publisher, Simon & Schuster, responded to requests for comment.
Among the steamiest claims Woodard makes in the tell-all is that she serviced former Governor Eliot Spitzer. She describes in graphic detail her alleged rough sex with the shamed pol, and says he at one point grabbed her by the throat until she feared for her safety.
Spitzer spokeswoman Lisa Linden has blasted Woodard’s claims as “absurd” and “a complete fabrication, that is unequivocally untrue.”
Outgoing Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and former DA Robert Morganthau – who was in office when Kristin Davis was busted – have both said Spitzer was not connected to the Davis case. Spitzer was outed as “Client #9” in the 2008 bust of Emperor’s Club VIP, run by Cecil Suwal and Mark Brener.
Spitzer spokeswoman Lisa Linden slammed Woodard’s account Sunday as “a complete fabrication, that is unequivocally untrue,” noting that former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who prosecuted Woodard’s first madam, and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, have said that Spitzer was not connected with the case.