Alexis Wright, 30, leaves the Cumberland County Courthouse, in Portland, Maine. Emails and text messages show Wright, the Maine fitness instructor who ran a prostitution operation out of her Zumba studio, had as many as five clients a day and wanted her co-conspirator monitoring the trysts.
ALFRED, Maine — A fitness instructor who ran a prostitution operation out of her Zumba dance studio had as many as five clients a day and wanted her business partner monitoring the trysts, according to her emails and text messages to him.
The messages between fitness instructor Alexis Wright and insurance agent Mark Strong Sr. were obtained Tuesday through a records request by the Portland Press Herald. The communications included spreadsheets Wright used to keep track of her clients, with names, dates, times, sex acts and payments.
Wright pleaded guilty last month to 20 counts including prostitution for using her studio in Kennebunk, a village known more for its sea captains' homes and beaches than for crime, as a front for prostitution. Strong was convicted of 13 counts.
Video and testimony during Strong's trial indicated Wright's trysts were captured by a hidden video camera in a sophisticated operation featuring meticulous ledgers and calendars and the use of license plates to identify clients. Strong, who has acknowledged having an affair with Wright, monitored the sex acts from his office 100 miles away.
In one series of texts, Wright says she's prepared to see a client but is waiting for Strong to let her know he's watching online.
"I won't see a client without your permission and viewing so I'll wait to hear from you I guess," she writes.
Other messages, from Feb. 9, 2012, show how busy Wright was having sex with men for money, with as little as 15 minutes between encounters, the newspaper reported.
"I had sex with Larry, Pete and Paul on Thursday," she writes. "And Michael, Pete, Pat, Jason and Mike today."
The Kennebunk prostitution scandal attracted international attention in the fall after it was reported that Wright's ledgers indicated she had more than 150 clients and made $150,000 over 18 months. Authorities then set the town abuzz with word that they would be charging each of the johns, leading residents to wonder who they were. The scores of people charged with engaging Wright's services include a former mayor, a high school hockey coach, a minister, a lawyer and a firefighter.
Wright, a 30-year-old single mother, pleaded guilty under an agreement that calls for 10 months in jail. Her sentencing is set for next month.
Strong, 57, served 15 days in jail and was released this month. His defense lawyers had characterized him as being infatuated with a younger woman and making bad moral decisions but never profiting from the prostitution operation.
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