By ,
Published January 14, 2015
Former "Hollywood Madam" Heidi Fleiss said she is abandoning plans to open a brothel catering to women in rural southern Nevada.
"I don't want to work so hard. ... and deal with all the nonsense in the sex business," Fleiss told the Las Vegas Review-Journal for a Tuesday report.
Fleiss first announced plans in late 2005 to open a bordello featuring male prostitutes at a property she owns outside the Nye County town of Pahrump, some 60 miles west of Las Vegas.
The brothel, which she promised to call "Heidi's Stud Farm," would have been a first in Nevada, where prostitution is legal in most rural counties, but not in the metropolitan areas surrounding Las Vegas or Reno.
Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo said Fleiss never applied for a brothel license.
Fleiss, 43, did not immediately respond to messages left at a 24-hour, coin-operated laundry she owns in Pahrump, called Dirty Laundry.
She told the Review-Journal that she plans to sell her property and focus instead on an unspecified alternative energy project.
"That's where the money is," she said. "That's the wave of the future."
A lawyer representing Fleiss in a pending felony drug case did not return a message seeking comment.
Fleiss faces a May 8 evidentiary hearing in that case, stemming from her Feb. 7, 2008, arrest in Pahrump on allegations that she used methamphetamine and possessed the painkiller hydrocodone without a prescription.
Fleiss has drawn attention several times since moving to Nye County in 2005 after serving prison time in California for running a high-priced prostitution ring.
Fleiss was featured in an HBO documentary released last year about her life in Pahrump. She lives in a doublewide trailer with about two dozen exotic pet birds such as parrots and macaws.
She also may be called to testify in an upcoming federal wire fraud case in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas against Nye County brothel owner Maynard "Joe" Richards.
https://www.foxnews.com/story/hollywood-madam-heidi-fleiss-abandons-plans-for-stud-farm