A Brazilian dancer who entered the country illegally testified at a Manhattan trial Friday about her romantic relationship with a onetime top Drug Enforcement Administration official, saying it began a few months after she arrived in the United States in early 2011 and ended after his arrest last year.
Prosecutors subpoenaed Andressa Delima to testify to support their claims that now-retired DEA Agent David Polos failed to disclose his extramarital relationship with the dancer and his partial ownership of a bikini bar because he knew it could cause him to lose his top-secret security clearance and his job as assistant special agent in charge of the New York office.
Speaking through a Portuguese interpreter, Delima told jurors she met Polos at Twins Plus Go-Go Lounge in South Hackensack, New Jersey. Polos had taken an ownership stake of it in 2011, and Delima was a dancer there.
Answering yes or no to most questions, the soft-spoken Delima said she came to New Jersey, where her sister lived, after entering the country illegally through Mexico.
Polos, 52, through attorney Marc Mukasey, has sharply disputed the claims, saying his client’s $20,000-plus investment in the business was similar to a stock market investment and should not be considered outside work.
Questioned by a prosecutor, Delima confirmed she began a romantic relationship with Polos within months of arriving in New Jersey in early 2011. She said it ended after Polos, of West Nyack, New York, was arrested in May 2015 along with Glen Glover, a DEA telecommunications specialist who has been suspended.
Glover, 46, of Lyndhurst, New Jersey, also is contesting the government’s claim that he violated the law when he failed to reveal his ownership position in the club.
On cross-examination, Mukasey elicited from Delima that she didn’t begin dating Polos until late 2011, around the time Polos bought her boots and a winter coat.
In his opening statement this week, Mukasey said the relationship began only after his client answered questions in September 2011 on security clearance forms filled out routinely by DEA employees.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Monteleoni told jurors there was a “slim to none” chance the government would have approved of DEA employees owning an adult establishment where prostitution and drug offenses were likely occurring because it raised the likelihood that employees possessing top-secret information could be put in compromising positions.
The government has said in court papers that Twins Plus Go-Go Lounge offered scantily clad and sometimes topless dancers — most of them workers from Brazil or Russia in the country illegally — and private rooms for lap dances.
A criminal complaint said video recovered during a search of the lounge, including from inside the private rooms, showed “multiple instances of sexual contact between dancers and patrons, with money exchanged afterward.”
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