Wal-Mart Gift Cards Buy More Than Stocking Stuffers

Wal-Mart may unintentionally be providing a few people with a little more than just everyday low prices this Christmas season.

According to KFSM, Channel 5, an “escort service” in Fort Smith that appears to be a front for prostitution will accept Wal-Mart gift cards as payment.

“We now take check by phone, Visa, Master (sic), Discover, American Express and Wal-Mart gift cards,” the escort company’s Web site’s home page said.

So if you want to make that special someone feel a little more special this year, you might consider stocking up on Wal-Mart gift cards as stocking stuffers. At $200 to $500 per hour for most of these escorts, you’ll need lots of cards.

KFSM reporter Ben Deci told viewers during the 10 p.m. newscast Dec. 3 that Worldwide Escorts, which is based in Texas, has a Web site that features more than a dozen River Valley residents and “information that is extremely personal, including photos and specific sexual preferences.”

For the sake of journalistic integrity, we felt obligated to log on to www.aworldwideescort.com to see if Deci was telling it like it is. Sure enough, if you call nude photos “personal,” then we guess he was pretty accurate.

Next to a woman from Fort Smith named Misty, we saw this comment from a client: “Day two: She did not answer her phone and did miss a date, however she stated she went to bed with the flew (sic) and stated she did not here (sic) the phone. She did keep all dates after that for the day with no complaints.”

The site also specifies whether the escorts are open to “video taping.” Men as well as women are available for “dating” through Worldwide Escorts.

The Web site says escorts are paid for their company only. “It goes on to say if sex should happen, it’s nothing more than a consensual act between two adults,” Deci reported.

“Prosecutors, however, have a different opinion,” he said. “They say that if there is an expectation of sex when a date is paid for, that’s prostitution. It makes no difference whether the date is bought over the computer or not.”

Sometime between Dec. 4 and Dec. 6, Worldwide Escorts removed the Wal-Mart gift card reference from its Internet home page, but by clicking onto the photographs, we saw that the gift cards were still specified as valid currency by individual escorts as of Dec. 6, when we went to press.