From all looks, Chuck Nabit is a man in a crowd family, a successful financer, donating to museums and schools, posing on a red carpet, his many shoes and colorful shirts. It was an art patron of millions who maintained their unique talents.
But a Baltimore businessman, famous for his closed rooms, dominated his wealth and power over young drug-addicted women, paid for sex, photographed them despite protests, as prosecutors claimed. , Leaving them “dehumanized”.
Nabit manipulated an adult sex worker to bid for $ 50, $ 40, and $ 35. A small amount was thrown like a scrap list and persuaded me to perform sexual activity with a GoPro camera or send a video of a degrading bathroom just for a kick. Judgment memo to the judge.
They spared no detail in introducing the 66-year-old man as a corrupt man at a ruling hearing on Monday in the US District Court in Baltimore.Nabit Pleaded guilty to one indictment five months ago Transporting a prostitute, and federal guidelines would have put him behind a 12-18 month old bar.
Prosecutors have stepped out of their daily routine to seek a stricter term of three years. Nabit’s defense lawyer demanded less than six months.
US District Judge George Levy Russell III settled in 18 months, the most severe penalty within the guidelines.
“He lived a double life,” said the judge. “There were definitely insulted and dehumanized prostitutes and women.”
Russell fined Nabit for $ 55,000 and ordered his two fathers to surrender on January 18 to begin their sentence after vacation. In an agreement with the prosecutor, Nabit paid $ 150,000 in a trust for the victims. According to court records, his property was $ 41 million.
“Mr. Nabit is not a monster in this court’s view. He was a very embarrassed man who did bad things and hurt many,” the judge said. “He did a lot too.”
The hearing ended a dramatic depression for businessmen. His alma mater, Sewanee: The University of the South, yanked his name from the Campus Art Building.
Nabit, the husband and father of two teenagers, has built a career in healthcare, restaurants, commercial real estate, and private equity. He owns a stake in Baltimore’s Mountain Manners Treatment Center for people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. He owned an old Felspoint restaurant waterfront kitchen, renamed Ampelsy three years ago.
Nabit has long been a staple of Baltimore society. He had a Christmas party at the historic Roland Park mansion. He owns a villa outside Bethany Beach and Bocalaton, Florida. He was a board member of the B & O Railroad Museum, Hippodrome Foundation, Walters Museum and Calvert School. According to court records, his non-profit organization, the Nabit Foundation, has donated more than $ 5 million.
Now he had to resign from the board and sell his business profits, he told the court on Monday. He said he was humble and humiliated. Nabit apologized to the court, his victims, his family and the community.
“I’m really sorry for the pain and suffering that the women experienced,” he said.
The incident revealed sex sold in the back room of a strip club in The Block, downtown Baltimore. Nabit’s lawyer wrote that four of his victims worked as exotic dancers but had commercial sex with men at the bar. The bar maintained the room used by sex workers.
According to prosecutors, Nabit met the women there, and a few hours later he walked his trist to his office on Commerce Street.
Since August 2018, he has paid at least $ 90,000 in sex to women and alleged strings, prosecutors wrote in court documents. They submitted hundreds of text messages, where he humiliated the woman and persuaded them to bid for his medicine. The women sought money to buy medicine and just hot meals. He admitted to offering a line of cocaine to at least one woman. He also toyed with them, the prosecutor wrote.
“The defendants especially preyed on lower class women with drug addiction and other vulnerabilities,” they write. “The accused’s manipulative and malicious behavior is further demonstrated by repeatedly paying some of the victims only $ 1 at a time until they meet their demands.”
One of his victims wrote to the judge that she was afraid of panic attacks, nightmares, men and struggling to leave the bedroom. She described Nabit as a man who erupts if he does not receive the attention and sexual favor he desires.
Last year, a federal agent raided Nabit’s office at his investment firm Westport Group LLC. According to court records, the agent found a large sofa that turned into a bed. There was a seat on the bed, five GoPro cameras, and a sex toy on his desk. The agent found a cache of videos and photos recording Nabit having sex with a woman.
The prosecutor charged him under the Mann Act. The Mann Act is a 100-year-old federal law aimed at prosecuting traffickers who offend women across state boundaries. According to Stephen Allen, he traveled with sex workers as an escort and companion, paying a woman $ 30,000 to $ 40,000 a year.
Still, defense lawyers argued that Nabit should be accused of being a commercial sex customer, “John,” rather than as a trafficker who imposes stricter penalties. Allen told the court that his investigation found no other cases indicted against a man who hired a woman as his escort and sexual companion and traveled with him.
“It’s a two-way road,” Allen told the court. “He was their sugar daddy. They were the women who wanted money.”
Fifteen months after being arrested, Navit spent more than $ 100,000 on 400 hours of psychotherapy and marriage counseling, saving the marriage and urging him to write the sex worker’s name and phone number on the briefcase. I tried to understand. His lawyer said.
His psychiatrist, Dr. Stacy Chris Kraft, told the court that Nabit suffers from compulsive tendencies, low self-esteem and sexual addiction. He has always suffered from intimate relationships with women and did not marry until the age of 48. He is a lonely man with an unfortunate marriage and has attracted the attention of Brock’s women.
“He had this kind of fantastic relationship in his head with these women,” the doctor told the court. “He recognized them as if they were girlfriends.”
His wife wrote a letter to the judge asking for mercy. Mary Kay Navit writes about the pain and embarrassment that his “addictive behavior” caused her and her two children, and his job of repairing wounds with treatment and church counseling. .. She told the judge that he was always a devoted father.
“Our primary concern is the well-being of our children,” she writes. “It’s painful to think that a father’s mistake can undermine their good personality. Going to jail would only make things worse for our children.”
Lamont Cousins, who spent 15 years in prison for murder and drug charges, said Judge Nabit gave him a job in Felspoint’s old waterfront kitchen. My cousins have become general managers of the restaurant today.
“In my case, people don’t even get a second chance in life,” Cousins said. “If I didn’t meet Mr. Nabit, where I am now, I wouldn’t want to see it.”
The hearing lasted at least four hours and the lawyer discussed his actions. Assistant US lawyer Mary Setzer reiterated a particularly graphic joke made to one of the addicted sex workers in a GoPro video.
Nabit told the woman that she would have sex with her body because she “did not want to waste her warm corpse,” Setzer told the court.
For federal prosecutors, his words were evidence of corruption. To his lawyer about the humor of the strangulation, which he believed in the emotional connection he felt for women. Two years later, the woman who received the text died from drug overdose.
According to court filings, Nabit kept a copy of his body in his office and sent it to his mother.