Online Prostitution Case Against FDU Professor Heads to Grand Jury

The case in New Mexico against a Fairleigh Dickinson University professor will likely go before a grand jury this month, a District Attorney’s spokeswoman said Friday.

Albuquerque Police charged David Flory, physics professor, and former University of New Mexico President F. Chris Garcia with running Southwest Companions, a sophisticated website that linked prostitutes with clients, allowed men to rate their experiences and offered tips on how to avoid undercover police.

Flory ran the website, which included 200 prostitutes and more than 1,200 johns, as a hobby, police said after his arrest. Through a subpoena to the site’s Internet domain registration company, police learned that Flory used his FDU e-mail account to create the site.

Detectives picked up Flory in June 2011 as he signed onto the site at an Albuquerque Starbucks, police said.

FDU officials shortly after his arrest. The school’s website has been scrubbed of references to the accused professor. New Jersey State Police searched his Metro campus office at the request of Albuquerque police, authorities said.

In an arrest warrant, a detective wrote that Flory signed on to the site at “all hours of the day… which would be consistent with that when he would be at work.”

Garcia, an interim president of UNM and author of 11 books, was also charged in the probe.

Prosecutors in Albuquerque while they continued to investigate.

"There's a number of individuals that we believe to be less involved that we're also looking at and talking to and getting information," District Attorney Kari Brandenburg told New Mexico’s KRQE News 13.

Robert Gorence, Garcia’s defense attorney, has said his client should be cleared of any wrongdoing, according to an Associated Press report.

An attorney for Flory could not be immediately reached. The District Attorney’s spokeswoman, Kayla Anderson, did not elaborate on the case.