INDIO - Women working for a Palm Springs escort service negotiated pay for sex with undercover officers in hotel rooms at the Queen Mary in Long Beach, the Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula and at the Marriott hotel in Riverside, according to testimony on Thursday.

The testimony from a Riverside County sheriff's investigator came in the second day of a preliminary hearing for four men and one woman charged in connection with the operation of Elite Entertainment, the escort service that authorities have described as a front for one of the region's largest prostitution rings.

Boaz Benmoshe, 44; Ofer Moses Lupovitz, 43; brothers Moti and Eliran Vintrov, ages 33 and 28; and Benmoshe's wife, Melanie Elizabeth Smith, 23, face a variety of charges including pimping, pandering, grand theft, perjury and tax fraud.

Thursday's testimony from sheriff's Detective Jeff Chebahtah detailed seven sting operations in locations from Los Angeles to Palm Desert in which undercover officers posed as clients and called Elite for an escort.

Defense attorneys questioned Chebahtah at length about whether he had specific information that any of the defendants were aware of the prostitution that occurred as part of the undercover operations.

Benmoshe and Lupovitz have been described as the owners of Elite Entertainment, which also operated under the names Hot Time Inc. and Premiere Connections.

Moti Vintrov was a former owner who sold the business to his uncle, Benmoshe, and became Elite's manager for its offices in Palm Springs and Palm Desert, according to testimony.

Much of Thursday's testimony at the Larson Justice Center in Indio focused on the finances of the five defendants, including the fact that Benmoshe and Smith had received a $979,623 loan in November 2005 for a home in Rancho Mirage.

Special Agent Paul Murphy of the Franchise Tax Board testified that their state tax returns showed much less income than the tens of thousands of dollars flowing through the defendants' bank accounts.

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