Former Playboy model Valerie Baber was an elite escort for the Emperors Club until she got swept up in the FBI sting that brought down Eliot Spitzer. From stripper to adult star to prostitute, she tells the whole story for the first time. Pretty interesting reading.

I had seen myself on TV before. I had seen myself on websites, magazines, flyers, calendars and CD covers, but I had never seen my picture on the news. It was one thing to be a model or the face of a product. It was another to be one of the faces of a scandal.

It was 2008, and after nearly a year of surveillance, the FBI had brought down the Emperors Club escort agency, along with then-Governor Eliot Spitzer, setting off a media tsunami that lasted for months—and swept me up with it. From the FBI pounding at my door, to the eventual exposure in the press, to the $25,000 fee paid to an attorney who would defend me for the unthinkable crime of having safe, consensual encounters with other adults, it was a major, life-changing experience for me. There were moments when not knowing how to handle the sudden brush with infamy put me in a numb, emotionless void. And I often found myself in denial that it had ever even happened. I was just a nice girl from Oklahoma.