Now here’s a wanted woman. Jaynie Mae Baker yesterday waltzes into court, where she was charged with helping alleged madam Anna Gristina. (AP)
HANDCUFFS NEVER LOOKED SO GOOD: Jaynie Mae Baker yesterday waltzes into court, where she was charged with helping alleged madam Anna Gristina. (J.B Nicholas / Splash News)
Anna Gristina
The stunning online matchmaker accused of running an Upper East Side brothel with the alleged Hockey Mom Madam was hauled into court in handcuffs yesterday, but looked no worse for wear.
Fresh from a sunny “get-away” on the beaches of Cabo San Lucas, Jaynie Mae Baker, 30, finally clicked into court in brown high heels, wearing snug tan slacks and with her strawberry blond hair falling in ringlets halfway down the back of her satiny pale blue blouse.
She’d been a wanted woman for the last three weeks.
Looking out of place with her hands cuffed behind her back, the Williamsburg resident was seated as she softly spoke the words “Not guilty” after a clerk read aloud the one count of promoting prostitution against her.
“This woman is a compassionate, caring and socially conscious young woman,” her lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, told reporters, saying her continent-spanning charitable work includes fund-raising in India, assisting at a Romanian orphanage and helping out in New York City soup kitchens.
Asked what his client did for a living, he said, “She has a legitimate job. She has been involved in legitimate matchmaking.
“There is nothing sordid about it,” he added. “She has been a matchmaker, and that is what she is doing.”
Like Anna Gristina, of upstate Monroe — who is due back in court tomorrow — Baker faces a possible seven years in prison if convicted of running a $2,000-per-visit escort service for millionaire clients, an operation that prosecutors say they are investigating for yet-to-be-described links to police protection.
Unlike Gristina — who remains on Rikers Island in lieu of a staggering $2 million bail after prosecutors argued that her well-heeled clients would help her flee — Baker was released from custody on $100,000 bail, posted by her Long Island beau, Marcus Laun.
An investment banker from Mill Neck, Laun is Baker’s on-again-off-again sweetheart, according to a source, who quipped, “I guess he’s on again.”
Laun put up the deed to his $1.2 million house, which he rents to a tenant.
But while the accused No. 1 madam was away, the accused second in command was playing.
According to her lawyer, Baker had been visiting her sister, Jessica, in LA and had no idea she was under indictment when she joined Jessica in leaving the States and flying to Cabo last week.
Lead prosecutor Charles Linehan countered in court yesterday that news of Baker’s indictment had already broken last week — in The Post — when Baker took her flight.
“Without indicating that she fled, she did end up leaving the country and going to Mexico” after news of her indictment, Linehan said.
But Gottlieb insisted Baker did not know she was wanted when she left for Mexico and turned herself in as soon as the schedules of airlines and prosecutors would allow.
“I asked the district attorney what was going on, and I learned of the indictment, and I told them she would be on the first flight back to the States,” he said.
Baker was momentarily detained by Customs upon landing at Newark Airport Saturday night, Gottlieb said. But Linehan personally informed officials that Baker would be turning herself in, the lawyer said, and she was allowed to return home.