But the record shows that Scottsdale police definitely had a hard-on for his adult businesses and apparently sought to drive him to ruin. Skin and Bones It’s not hard to see why the drugging scheme claims were believable. After all, the amounts that strip club clientele spent at the three establishments are staggering. One man supposedly charged a total of $179,200. Another charged $177,100. A third racked up $65,000 in charges. And so on. Many of those listed in the complaint filed by Galarza used American Express, which processed the charges. Each plaintiff claims to have been “unwittingly drugged” and “kidnapped” by being separated from their friends and led into VIP rooms. Once they were incapaci- tated, their wallets and ID were allegedly taken from them and their signatures and thumbprints either faked or forced onto contracts. Then they supposedly were propped up for photos to document their purchases, despite being heavily drugged. The latest version of Galarza’s complaint lists American Express, Borowsky’s two clubs and his affiliated LLCs as defendants. It alleges that the clubs engaged in “a pattern of illegal behavior,” and that AmEx effectively looked the other way as the clubs rang up the charges on its cards to insane amounts. American Express did not respond to a request for comment, but Galarza told New Times that he is currently in “31 arbi- tration proceedings against American Express,” which he can’t discuss in detail because the process is confidential. “The only thing I can tell you is that my clients are happy,” he said. Galarza pointed to the similarity in the tales being told by his clients and the fact that they didn’t know each other as evidence that they were victims of a racke- teering conspiracy. Many of the men conceded to Scottsdale investigators that they had been drinking prior to arriving at one of the clubs. Some claim their fingerprints and signatures were forged, though the Attorney General’s Office told New Times that it found no evidence of forgeries. Others contend that they were forced to sign and give fingerprints. Interestingly, according to Galarza’s complaint, a few of the plaintiffs admit to charging exorbitant amounts — just not nearly as exorbitant as they were ulti- mately billed. A Bones patron states that he was “rendered incapacitated by something given to him by club representatives” and charged a total of $177,100, but admitted to authorizing an astonishing $17,884 of the total. The guy who was charged $179,200 spent more than six hours at the same establishment, though he acknowledged that drinks and a private dance cost him $8,400, which he authorized. Other than the eye-popping credit card receipts, though, there’s a notable lack of hard evidence that anything criminal was amiss. None of the men can prove they were drugged or — more impor- tantly — that they were drugged at the strip clubs. All of which sounds like morning-after shame to Dennis Wilenchik, the attorney repre- senting Borowsky in both lawsuits. He believes patrons of the club get caught up in the moment, and, as indie rocker Beck once sang, go crazy with the Cheez Whiz. “Nobody’s putting a gun to their head,” Wilenchik said of the supposedly drugged patrons. “They get back home, they sober up, and they realize, ‘What the fuck did I just do?’” Despite the sometimes six-figure bills, Wilenchik finds the “I wuz drugged” excuse a little too convenient. “I can find no evidence anybody was drugged, OK?” said Wilenchik, who has also represented Borowsky’s sister, the Scottsdale mayor, in other matters. “And if they were, it certainly wasn’t with management’s knowledge.” Scottsdale police didn’t find much evidence, either. Coming up empty Indeed, the best backup for Wilenchik’s advocacy is the record of a piss-poor inves- tigation done by the Scottsdale cops into the claims of mass drugging being done in their backyard. Borowsky’s lawsuit claims the Scottsdale investigation was retaliation for a series of events in which ex-Scottsdale police officers at the Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control investigated Skin Cabaret during the COVID-19 pandemic over governmental social-distancing direc- tives. The club was suspended in 2020 for allegedly violating COVID protocols. Shortly after, the investigator in the case was accused of inappropriately touching a dancer at Skin Cabaret. The same investi- gator had been in trouble previously for allegedly inserting his finger into the vagina of a stripper at the Hi Liter Gentleman’s Club in Phoenix. The fallout from the scandal triggered internal investigations and the resignation of two senior liquor control officials. According to Borowsky’s complaint and supporting documents, a Scottsdale police commander was also reprimanded for his back-channel discussions with liquor authority officials about the dancer’s complaint. As a result, the Borowsky lawsuit maintains that Scottsdale Police Department muck-a-mucks “harbored retaliatory animus” toward Borowsky and his clubs. “A lot of this is my conjecture,” said Wilenchik. “But as I see it, Scottsdale was going after people like Todd Borowsky, who they blamed for basically being part of a group that got rid of their buddies at the liquor department.” That may be true, but police agencies in general have never needed an excuse to harass adult businesses, which are catnip for cops. And Borowsky was already on the Scottsdale Police Department’s radar. In 2006, he and other strip club owners helped overturn Scottsdale’s onerous anti- lap dance regulations. Over the years, Scottsdale police have raided and charged Borowsky’s clubs several times. The probe into the alleged druggings began in 2021 when Dennis Metz, a detec- tive with Scottsdale police’s financial crimes unit, was assigned to look into complaints of extreme over-billing and possible druggings at Borowsky’s cabarets. Initially, most of the complaints had been quickly closed by police. In a revealing transcript of a July 2025 arbitration proceeding, which New Times obtained from Wilenchik, Metz was ques- tioned by Galarza and attorneys for the credit card companies involved. Metz said that prior to his investigation, police treated the complaints as “a civil issue” and labeled them as such. But Metz began reopening complaints against the clubs from years prior, relabeling them as suspected viola- tions of state laws against “fraudulent schemes and artifices.” He informed his fellow cops that any calls involving the three clubs should be written up and the reports sent to him. From 2019 to 2024, he said, he identified 96 suspect complaints, 29 of which involved American Express. Many of the complain- ants were not interested in filing charges. According to Borowsky’s lawsuit, few had claimed to have been drugged when they first disputed their charges, only doing so after Metz reopened their complaints. New Times has not been able to verify this assertion. Still, Metz testified in his arbitration deposition that no charges were ever brought, and that he could not establish a criminal conspiracy and had no evidence of anyone being drugged or anything else illegal. When questioned by the attorneys and the arbitration judge, Metz said he had never requested a toxicology report during his years-long investigation. It didn’t matter anyway, he said, because even if the toxicology report turned up positive, there would be no way to know if a customer had been doped at one of the clubs. The investigation involved other offi- cers — as many as eight, according to Borowsky’s complaint — but Scottsdale police never assigned any undercover operatives to snoop around the clubs. Why not? Metz said the idea was discussed by his unit and by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, which joined the probe at one point, but they decided against it because there were “a lot of risks.” “If there is any truth to clients or customers being drugged, if I send a UC (undercover) in there, that UC is poten- tially going to get drugged,” he said. That seems a particularly lame excuse, given that undercover cops get into lots of sketchy situations involving drugs, gun buys, organized crime and more — risky activities that, if undertaken by police, have the benefit of proving a criminal allegation. Metz also claimed that strippers could spot an undercover cop a mile away, which suggests that exotic dancers are somehow more wary of potential narcs, and better at sniffing them out, than drug dealers. Metz claimed there was “never a task force” formed for the investigation, and that — surprisingly — he never listened to any of the initial recordings of calls from suspected victims or read their associated transcripts. Nor did he recall any of the complainants saying that their signature had been forged. Metz and the Attorney General’s Office did subpoena records from the clubs and various financial insti- tutions, but they turned up bupkis. >> p 12 Many of the men suing Todd Borowsky’s clubs over an alleged drugging scheme took photos confirming their purchases in which they look quite alert. (Courtesy of Dennis Wilenchik)
