PHILADELPHIA. Jailed drug kingpin Alton “Ace Capone” Coles used to hold weekly parties at the Palmer Social Club, renting out an entire floor of the three-story nightclub on Spring Garden Street.
Coles’ late night shindigs also may have attracted federal investigators to the Palmer, according to the attorney for the club and its manager, Michael Weiss, who was indicted yesterday for tax fraud.
“I have a sneaking suspicion that the Alton Coles case had something to do with this,” attorney Thomas Bergstrom said. “We would rent a floor to him on Friday nights some time ago so he could do his thing.
We didn’t have anything to do with what he was charged with. [But] it was something to get this started.”
A spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office declined to comment on whether the case was linked to Coles’ conviction for running a drug ring.
According to the indictment, an assistant manager would collect the nightly proceeds in cash and receipts from the registers and give them to Weiss in a large plastic bag. During 2004 and 2005, authorities say he failed to report about $1.6 million in profits and that he kept two sets of records.
