DOCUMENT: Sex

Exec Sued Over 241k Strip Club Tab

Amex seeks to collect on Missouri CEO's wild New York night

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Exec Sued Over 241k Strip Club Tab

OCTOBER 21--A Missouri businessman who claims that a $241,000 bill for a night of lap dance luxuriating at Manhattan's leading strip club is a fraud is being sued by American Express for refusing to pay the debt. According to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in New York State Supreme Court (a copy of which you'll find below), Amex contends that Robert McCormick, 40, and three guests ran up the tab during a visit to the Scores nightclub in October 2003. McCormick, the chairman and chief executive of Savvis Communications, a publicly held technology firm, has refused to pay the strip club tab, which was placed on his corporate credit card. McCormick and his firm have claimed that only about $20,000 of the charges are legitimate. In its lawsuit, Amex alleges that McCormick, who is pictured at right, signed credit card slips authorizing the six-figure bill, though the complaint does not detail how the quartet actually ran up the monumental tab. Remarkably, the day after McCormick's Score's bacchanal, a Bangladeshi man and his trio of buddies rung up this six-figure whopper at the Gotham gentlemen's joint. (11 pages)