As you may know by now, Kevin Provencher, a veteran sportswriter for the Manchester, N.H. Union Leader, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison on Friday for running a prostitution ring on the side. Hey, you gotta make ends meet. But new information on the story was reported today by, of all sources, the travel section of USA Today. It seems that Mr. Provencher had been booking the hotel rooms with a Marriott Rewards card.
According to the July 28, 2009 police report posted online by the Eagle Tribune newspaper, Andover, Mass., police began investigating after staff from the Marriott-brand Springhill Suites hotel at 550 Minuteman Road called in possible prostitution activity.
Hotel staff told police that Provencher, 52, had been booking rooms at the hotel for several Thursdays and Fridays and “paying with a credit card linked to a rewards points system used by the chain of hotels owned by the Marriott hotels,” the report says.
In other words, he booked rooms for prostitutes using Marriott Rewards credit card.
It all made for this quite amusing teaser headline stack in the USA Today travel section:
* PHOTO TOUR: Gothic railway hotel re-opens in London
* WORLD’S HIGHEST HOTEL: Rooftop pool on Floor 118!
* TWITTER: Follow Hotel Check-In
* PROSTITUTION: Turn tricks, collect Marriott Rewards points!
Yes, the last one was mine, but it should look like that.
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Sports journalist-turned-pimp collected Marriott Rewards points [USA Today]
A New Journalism Business Model? New Details Emerge About Sportswriter-Turned-Pimp [SportsGrid]
