A man arrested in the Pharaoh’s strip club investigation this week is a former Batavia chiropractor who was sentenced to prison time in 2001 after pleading guilty to the sexual abuse of two teenage patients.
Joseph Barsuk Jr. was convicted of two misdemeanor sexual abuse charges and was sentenced to 60 days in prison after police accused him of molesting two teenage girls who came for treatment at his office, The Buffalo News reported in April 2001.
Barsuk, now 65, is the same individual who was arrested by Buffalo FBI agents on Wednesday in connection with the probe into alleged sex trafficking at Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club in Cheektowaga, his attorney confirmed on Friday.
A federal grand jury indicted Barsuk on felony charges of sex-trafficking conspiracy and sex trafficking by coercion at Pharaoh’s. He was taken into custody after federal agents conducted a court-authorized search of his home on South Pearl Street Road in Batavia.
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Buffalo attorney James Quinn Auricchio was appointed to represent Barsuk after the former chiropractor told a judge that 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 said he is “baffled” as to why federal prosecutors and agents are targeting Barsuk.
“He lost his license to practice as a chiropractor, he is totally disabled, and he has not worked in any meaningful capacity since at least 2014,” Auricchio said. “They have charged him with something that allegedly took place in the years 2013 to 2017. He’s been a customer at Pharaoh’s but he vehemently denies being part of any kind of sex-trafficking conspiracy.”
After police in Genesee County arrested Barsuk in 2000, he denied charges that he sexually abused two teenage patients. His case went to a jury trial in 2001, and jurors were deadlocked, unable to reach a unanimous verdict.
Barsuk later took an “Alford plea,” pleading guilty to two misdemeanor sexual abuse charges but never actually admitting that the conduct took place, Auricchio said. Under state law, an Alford plea allows a defendant to maintain his innocence while also admitting that the evidence against him would probably result in a conviction at trial.
Auricchio said that – to his knowledge – Barsuk has not been convicted of any other crimes since.
The main defendant in the Pharaoh’s case is the strip club’s owner, Peter Gerace Jr., who faces felony charges of drug trafficking, sex trafficking and paying bribes to a former federal drug agent, Joseph Bongiovanni. Both Gerace and Bongiovanni, who is charged with accepting bribes, have pleaded not guilty.
Also charged in the case this week was a longtime bouncer at Pharaoh’s, Brian Rosenthal. He pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, lying to the FBI and concealing a felony.
Rosenthal worked in the strip club’s VIP Room, where some customers paid strippers for sex acts, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph M. Tripi said.
Tripi said the club has been operated as a “criminal enterprise,” where vulnerable young women are groomed with illegal drugs and pressured into taking part in sex acts, sometimes with prominent local men.
Rosenthal also denied the allegations against him. His attorney, Herbert L. Greenman, called the charges “a bunch of suspicions and surmised conjecture.”
