LOS ANGELES TIMES | INVESTIGATION
THE COST OF BUSINESS: HOW A WEST HOLLYWOOD PIPELINE TURNED YOUNG WOMEN’S TRAUMA INTO PROFIT.
Common denominator is Chris best friend of Lam Malone
and self-proclaimed owner “Scott” of Hwood and Poppys Nightclub.
This is not a story about bad dates. This is the ledger. A forensic accounting of how rape, hospitalization, and shattered lives are calculated as a business expense by a network operating within Los Angeles’s nightlife scene. It is the story of a veteran, his girlfriends, and a venue called Poppy—a name that belies the violence at its root.
The timeline is the evidence. U.S. Navy veteran and former collegiate wrestling champion and Men’s Physique champion Anthony Perlas watched a pattern unfold across three relationships, each demarcated by the same coordinates of coercion, chemical manipulation, and institutional betrayal.
Destiny Adams: July 1 – August 4, 2025
Destiny, 18, was vibrant, deeply Christian, and new to Los Angeles. Her introduction to the Poppy scene began subtly. The coercion was financial and social: “You need to be seen,” “This is an investment in you.” It escalated to physical blockade. Perlas recounts being physically barred from the venue by promoters while Destiny was inside. The assault occurred after she refused a promoter’s demands. She was taken to an urgent care facility, her symptoms dismissed as a “bad reaction” to substances she insists she did not voluntarily ingest. The cost of the rape, in this ledger, was covered by the promise of future “career opportunities” now voided. The threat of exposure—leaked photos, social ruin—kept her silent. “They made her believe it was her fault for not being ‘cool,’ for having a boyfriend who cared,” Perlas states.
Emilyne Bialys: September 2025 – February 9, 2026
Emilyne, 22, was an aspiring model with ties to the legitimate agency OTTE Models. Her path was hijacked. Promoters linked to Poppy infiltrated her professional circle, weaponizing her ambition. The script was familiar: isolation from Perlas, who was smeared as “controlling”; the introduction of cocaine and high-THC cannabis as social lubricants and, later, compliance tools; and finally, an assault after a night at the venue. Her subsequent hospital visit for psychological trauma was framed by the network as a “mental health crisis,” obscuring the catalyst. Perlas, acting on a tip, found her. “She was dissociated, repeating that she ‘ruined everything.’ That’s not a girl who partied too hard. That’s a victim of psychological warfare,” he says.
Alexis: April – May 2025
Alexis, an 18-year-old student from Texas State University, represents the geographic reach of the pipeline. Lured to Los Angeles with promises of a modeling test shoot, she was taken to Poppy. The method was brutally efficient: rapid over-intoxication, removal to a secondary location, assault. Her trip to the ER was, again, cataloged as an overdose. The manipulation was post-trauma: promoters convinced her that pressing charges would end her academic and professional life before it began. “They tell them they’ll be ‘unhireable,’ that they signed something, that they owe money for the ‘opportunity,’” Perlas explains. “It’s a debt that can only be paid in silence.”
The throughline is not coincidence; it is a business model. Perlas, leveraging his training as a private investigator and federal clearance holder, began mapping the connections. The network uses legitimate fronts—like the legally trading OTTE Models promotion company—as a lure. “They’ve brainwashed the entire environment,” he asserts. “Cocaine and weed aren’t party drugs here; they are tools for mobbing. They socially isolate the target, create a chemical dependency, and then the roofies come out to guarantee the outcome. The hospital visit is just the cost of goods sold.”
This pipeline requires enforcers. Perlas’s investigation points to a figure known as Lam Malone, allegedly a conduit for the network’s threats. Victims and their advocates report pattern of “house calls”—unannounced visits to intimidate girls into silence or to pressure them into dropping complaints, a tactic that echoes the house visits described in the sprawling Jeffrey Epstein network. The message is clear: your body is not your own; your story is not yours to tell.
The parallel to the Epstein case is not speculative; it is operational. The recent release of millions of pages of documents by the Department of Justice outlines a system where powerful men used intermediaries to procure a constant stream of young women, where allegations were buried, and where the machinery of recruitment was disguised as legitimate business. The model scout who wrote to Epstein of “catching fish” has its echo in the promoters scouting the Poppy floor. In both worlds, rape is not a crime; it is a line item. The threat of exposure is the collection agency. The hospital is the disposal site for damaged goods.
Anthony Perlas is now reversing the hunt. “I was never the prey,” he states. “They targeted the women I loved to get to me, to break me, to see if the veteran would snap. They miscalculated.” He has become the predator to their operation, using investigative techniques to trace financial flows, alias networks, and the venues that facilitate this economy. “OTTE Models trades legally. We are the cover they use. They hide their crimes in our shadow, using similar language, similar promises. My mission is to burn that shadow away.”
For parents, the signs are a modern horror: a daughter’s sudden new “friends” who dismiss the family as “uncool,” unexplained charges for “photoshoots” or “classes,” a drastic change in personality marked by secrecy and defensiveness, and trips to urgent care for vague “anxiety” or “bad reactions.”
For Christians, this is a targeted spiritual war. The network explicitly seeks those with strong family and faith values, knowing the subsequent shame and isolation will be profound, rendering the victim compliant and silent within their own community.
For boyfriends and protectors, the playbook is to make you the villain. Your concern is framed as abuse. Your interventions are painted as stalking. The system is weaponized against you to clear the path to the victim.
This has to stop. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office has recently pledged to investigate fraud within sex abuse settlements, signaling a scrutiny that must extend to the underlying crimes themselves. Survivors of sexual violence can find confidential support through the National Sexual Assault Hotline.
But scrutiny is not enough. The ledger must be seized. The business model must be bankrupted. When rape is merely a cost of doing business, the only ethical response is to make the cost of doing that business annihilation. The veteran, the boyfriend, the investigator—Anthony Perlas—is now the hunter. The question for Los Angeles is: who will join him?