NEW YORK (AP) -- For 17 years, the New York strip club Scores put a celebrity veneer on the sleaziest of businesses.
But after months of legal troubles, the flesh joint famous for its high-rolling clientele of sports stars and actors is getting new owners and a new name.
State officials last week gave conditional approval to a plan to transfer the original Scores on Manhattan's east side to a group affiliated with one of the country's biggest strip joints, the Sapphire Club in Las Vegas.
The transfer could take place as soon as Dec. 19.
Scores had been waging a losing battle to hold on to its liquor license after a prostitution bust at its sister club, Scores West, in 2007.
The police raid was the latest in a string of legal complications for the club's owners, who had, for a brief time, built the Scores name into a national brand. The West Side version of the club closed in the spring. Other spinoffs around the country shed the Scores name. The original club, which opened on East 60th Street in 1991, has been in jeopardy for several months.
On Dec. 3 the club's partners made it official, agreeing to pay a $10,000 fine and surrender their liquor license by Dec. 19.
On the same day, new owners David Talla, Jeffrey Wasserman and Glen Bernardi received approval from the New York State Liquor Authority to take over the location.
``The state was taking our license. There wasn't much we could do,'' Elda Auerbach, a Scores publicist and company director, said Thursday.
She said she didn't know yet when the club's last day would be. Lawyers for the club didn't immediately return phone calls.
The new owners, who also recently took over the license of a club in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, haven't yet announced their plans for the establishment. An attorney for the group, Terry Flynn, couldn't immediately put The Associated Press in touch with its managers. A call to a managing partner at the Las Vegas club was not immediately returned.
Scores was probably New York's best known strip club, thanks to a big-name guest list and regular promotion on the Howard Stern radio show. It was a gossip column staple, with the tabloids reporting on the comings and goings of celebs including Colin Farrell, Russell Crowe, Lindsay Lohan and Yankee Jason Giambi. As recently as this fall the club was parodied on Saturday Night Live.
Despite its success, Scores courted trouble from the start. In the early 1990s it was a hangout for mobsters, including Gambino crime family associates who collected tribute payments until an FBI investigation sent reputed boss John ``Junior'' Gotti to prison in 1999.
Its original owners, Michael Blutrich and Lyle Pfeffer, wore wires for the feds and entered the witness protection program, but are now serving 20-year prison terms in an unrelated fraud case.
In more recent years, some patrons sued claiming their credit cards had been overcharged by thousands of dollars. Two of its current owners, Harvey Osher and Richard Goldring, were indicted on tax charges in 2006. Goldring got five years probation. Osher was sentenced to four weekends in jail.
The police detectives who raided Scores West in January of 2007 arrested several dancers they claimed were performing sexual acts in private rooms. Most of the charges were later dropped, but the arrests formed the basis of the state's attempt to bar the owners from serving alcohol.
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