In the early 2000s and 2010s, a group of former exotic dancers and adult entertainment workers banded together to scam wealthy regulars in New York City strip clubs. But their scheme didn't work forever.
STXfilms/@Roselyn_Keo/X (Formerly Twitter)In the movie Hustlers, Constance Wu portrayed the character Dorothy (a.k.a. Destiny), who was inspired by Roselyn Keo.
In 2019, Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu starred in Hustlers, a film about a crew of former exotic dancers and adult entertainment workers scheming to scam men out of thousands of dollars. But the film was actually based on the true story of a group of women who ran a very similar criminal enterprise during the 2000s and early 2010s.
Roselyn Keo and Samantha Barbash were real women who built a successful scheme based on tricking wealthy men into spending thousands at New York City strip clubs, including a venue called Scores in Chelsea.
The women’s names, and some other details, were changed in the film, but the characters that Keo and Barbash inspired were played by Constance Wu and Jennifer Lopez, respectively. Lili Reinhart portrayed a character inspired by another member of the crew, Karina Pascucci, and Keke Palmer played a dramatized version of yet another group member, Marsi Rosen.
Here’s a look at the real-life story behind the film, including what the movie got right — and wrong — about how the hustlers’ scam went down.
How The Real-Life Hustlers Put Together A Seemingly Perfect Scheme
FacebookSamantha Barbash, who inspired the character Ramona in Hustlers, was angered by Jennifer Lopez’s portrayal of her.
In 2015, journalist Jessica Pressler for New York Magazine sat down with Roselyn Keo for a chat. Keo and Pressler spoke multiple times, with their conversations culminating in Pressler’s article “The Hustlers at Scores.”
The piece detailed how a group of women, including Keo, had run a successful scam during the early 2000s and 2010s, which initially came about due to their struggles amidst the 2008 financial crisis.
Keo, along with Samantha Barbash, Karina Pascucci, and Marsi Rosen, would go to high-end bars in New York City to find potential targets. They would find a man, typically one who worked a high-paying job, spike his drinks with a mix of MDMA and ketamine, and convince him to visit a strip club.
“It sounds so bad to say that we were, like, drugging people,” Keo recalled to Pressler. “But it was, like, normal. What’s an extra $20,000 to them?”
At the club, where the women had already negotiated a big percentage of their clients’ spending, the women would take advantage of the man’s drugged state and run his credit card or debit card for as much money as they could. They would often swindle the men out of thousands of dollars.
They got away with it partly because many of the men wouldn’t want to file a formal complaint about the incident. It would mean admitting to having met with these women or gone to strip clubs to begin with, which may not have been worth the money they lost, especially if the men were married.
Not to mention, many police officers didn’t take the initial reports of this scam seriously. As Pressler reported, the New York City Police Department has long received countless calls about men being drugged and then losing large amounts of money at strip clubs, but the authorities’ “unofficial position has always been that the callers are full of sh*t.”
How The Scam Came Crashing Down
STXfilmsConstance Wu and Jennifer Lopez in a Hustlers scene.
The scheme was successful for many years, until one man called into the New York City Police Department with evidence against the women.
The unidentified man, one of many victims who fell for the scam, had recorded a phone call between him and one of the women involved with it. After he begged her to tell him what happened, she finally told him the truth.
“He’d been fleeced by a gang of ex-strippers who had spiked his drink with narcotics,” Pressler wrote in her 2015 article. “Just a sprinkle.”
It was the kind of evidence it took for police to open an investigation.
Authorities tracked down the woman who made the call — believed to be an ex-stripper assisting Keo and Barbash who already had trouble with the law — and she confessed quickly. But it took another victim coming forward, a doctor from New Jersey, for police to really make progress on the case.
The story about the doctor, Zyad Younan, made it to the New York Post, and with the help of his description of events, the police were able to identify and arrest Pascucci, Rosen, Barbash, and Keo in June 2014.
According to the police, the doctor wrongly believed that he was dating Pascucci, which likely played a big role in the scheme unraveling.
In addition to the doctor, three other men eventually came forward to testify against the group of women. As a result, the women were charged with forgery, conspiracy, grand larceny, and assault.
Considering her options, Keo ultimately chose to confess to the police in the hopes of securing the best plea deal she could get.
“At first I was like, ‘No. I don’t want to be a rat,'” Keo described to Pressler at the time. “But then I thought about it, and I’m, like, the only one of those girls that’s normal, with a brain on my head, with a child and a future.”
When Pressler wrote the article, the trials and sentencing were still ongoing.
What Hustlers Got Right — And Wrong
STXfilmsLili Reinhart, Jennifer Lopez, Keke Palmer, and Constance Wu in Hustlers.
The film gets the broad strokes correct. A group of women, primarily former exotic dancers and adult entertainment workers, put together a scheme to scam men out of thousands, but their actions caught up with them.
The director of the film, Lorene Scafaria, told Time in 2019 that she wanted to keep the adaptation faithful to the source material of Pressler’s article, and by extension, the real-life stories of the women.
“There’s a responsibility to the truth and what really happened,” Scafaria said. “And it’s not a black and white story, after all.”
Many details are taken directly from Pressler’s article, including the exact dollar amount that Ramona (Jennifer Lopez’s character who was inspired by Samantha Barbash) scammed out of one client in one sitting: $50,000.
The scene in which the women are arrested closely follows the retelling of how the real arrests went down. The film also includes Constance Wu’s character’s decision to take a plea deal for the sake of her daughter’s future.
However, some details in the movie were reportedly invented to make the main characters more sympathetic. For instance, Wu’s character Dorothy (a.k.a. Destiny) initially became a stripper to support her grandmother. But Roselyn Keo, the real woman behind the character, had already grieved her grandmother’s death by the time she started working at a gentlemen’s club.
Notably, the film is also framed around Wu’s character recalling events to a reporter writing a story on the scam. The film ends with the reporter encouraging Wu’s character to make amends with Lopez’s character — a reconciliation that’s reportedly never happened between Keo and Barbash.
Where Are The Real-Life Hustlers Now?
Police PhotosRoselyn Keo and Samantha Barbash’s mugshots. They — and the other women involved in their scheme — faced relatively light consequences for their actions.
All of the women came out on the other side of the scandal with relatively light consequences, considering their criminal charges.
Roselyn Keo, portrayed by Constance Wu in the film, was able to get off with no jail time after confessing to grand larceny and attempted assault. She ended up getting five years of probation in the end.
Keo also wrote a book about her experience as one of the ringleaders of the scheme, titled The Sophisticated Hustler. She was also excited about the release of the film Hustlers, according to an article from 2019.
Karina Pascucci, whose dramatized character Annabelle was played by Lili Reinhart, pled guilty to conspiracy and grand larceny. She was sentenced to weekend prison in Rikers for four months and five years of probation. Pascucci also seemed to be excited about Hustlers, as she attended the movie premiere alongside Keo and happily posed for photos.
U.S. Dept. of JusticeA photo of Karina Pascucci’s arrest in 2014.
Rosen, whose dramatized character Mercedes was played by Keke Palmer, pled guilty to grand larceny and conspiracy, and was sentenced to four months of weekends in prison. She has since stayed out of the public eye.
Finally, Barbash, portrayed by Jennifer Lopez, ended up pleading guilty to conspiracy, assault, and grand larceny in exchange for five years’ probation.
Unlike the other former ringleader, Barbash was less than thrilled about the film’s release. In 2019, she claimed the film was based on falsities, and that she was exploring legal action due to Lopez’s portrayal of her.
Barbash said, “They’re going off a false story. I was not a stripper. Everything — where [J.Lo] is going on poles and stuff — that’s not me… She’s actually misrepresenting me. I was never a stripper. It’s defamation of character.” She insisted that her actual job consisted only of being a hostess at gentlemen’s clubs and arranging for the “hottest girls to come to parties.”
In January 2020, Barbash did end up suing Lopez’s production company for exploitation of her image and defamation of character. However, she lost the lawsuit later that same year. In addition, Barbash wrote a book titled Underscore, which she claims to be the completely true retelling of what she actually did during the time the scam would’ve been happening.
At the end of the day, there still is a lot about this story that remains uncertain, especially considering one thing that Keo claimed to Pressler shortly before her article’s release: “Right now, I am telling you everything is fictional. If you want to write the fictional story I told you, you can.”
Next, go inside the true story that inspired the movie Pain & Gain. Then, discover the real story of Jordan Belfort, the stockbroker whose life and crimes inspired The Wolf Of Wall Street.
