The lawyer for a man arrested in the Pharaoh’s strip club investigation asked Wednesday for a mental competency exam for his client.
Joseph Barsuk, a former Batavia chiropractor, was indicted on a sex-trafficking conspiracy count, as well as sex trafficking by coercion, and he remains detained. His detention hearing, during which his lawyer would have argued for his pretrial release, was scheduled for Wednesday. But U.S. Magistrate Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr. postponed it after hearing Buffalo attorney James Quinn Auricchio’s request.
The judge gave Auricchio until Nov. 3 to file a motion for the evaluation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi did not object to the request.
“I believe there’s reasonable cause,” Auricchio told the judge of his request at Wednesday’s court proceeding.
Barsuk told the judge last month he is virtually penniless, getting by on food stamps and Social Security payments.
Auricchio said his client has been a customer at Pharaoh’s, but the attorney previously told The News that he is “baffled” as to why federal prosecutors and agents are targeting Barsuk.
The criminal charges against Barsuk and co-defendant Brian Rosenthal, who had been a bouncer at Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club in Cheektowaga, have implications for Peter Gerace Jr., the owner of the club, who faces charges that include maintaining Pharaoh’s as a drug-involved premises where vulnerable young women were exploited through their drug addictions and coerced into engaging in commercial sex acts.
Both Barsuk and Rosenthal have pleaded not guilty.
Schroeder last month released Rosenthal from pretrial custody, saying he found no clear and convincing evidence that Rosenthal is a danger to the community or a flight risk.
Rosenthal, who has no criminal record, was indicted by a federal grand jury of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, lying to the FBI and concealing a felony.
Tripi has described Rosenthal as “one of the people who allowed the crimes to happen over and over again” at Pharaoh’s.
