A New Jersey middle school teacher was arrested after allegedly acting as a hooker’s “muscle” in a bizarre alleged prostitute and john encounter in an Atlantic City casino hotel earlier this month.
The educator, who was fired after the incident, claims the entire matter was a misunderstanding, and that she was at the scene “strictly to party,” according to a report Saturday by the New York Post, which recently obtained a copy of the criminal complaint.
Police allege that Amanda Crafts, 35, a computer teacher at New Jersey’s Middle Township Middle School, and Veda Engel, 23, allegedly bamboozled an unsuspecting sex customer on October 9.
Crafts allegedly pinned down the nude john while the pair accessed his ApplePay account using his cellphone’s facial recognition feature and transferring $1,250, the man told authorities.
The alleged encounter unfolded following the trio meeting at the hotel bar of Caesar’s Atlantic City, where the unidentified victim met Engel and Crafts, both of Cape May County, according to a criminal complaint obtained by the Post.
There, they exchanged phone numbers. Engel later called the man and invited him to a hotel room at Harrah’s Resort, according to the police complaint.
Engel then abruptly stopped and reportedly said, “That’s what you get for your $1,250.”
The complaint stated that Crafts, who weighs 180 pounds, continued to pin the man down as Engel held his iPhone up to his face to use facial recognition to open his phone and make four transfers to totaling $1,250.
Crafts contends that version of the story is all wrong.
The lawyer for the fired teacher and single mother of four said his client had no part in the alleged theft and did not hold the man down at all.
Attorney Charles Peruto Jr. claimed Crafts was also unaware that Engel was allegedly engaging in prostitution.
“I’ve never been arrested before,” Crafts is quoted as saying. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Amanda Crafts is highly intelligent and wouldn’t participate in anything like that, Peruto told the Post. “She was in the room and wanted to leave and didn’t even realize it was a prostitution thing.”
He added, “She is mortified.”
Police were called to the room by the john after he “prematurely ejaculated” and Engel ended the session, the attorney also said. The man was upset because he paid for an hour of service which was ending long before his time was up, the attorney claimed.
“Maybe the prostitute took advantage of him but my client had nothing to do with it,” the lawyer said.
Engel has a rap sheet. She was charged for prostitution in December 2025 after she was accused of offering sex in exchange for $1,000 to an undercover New Jersey State Police detective at a luxury Atlantic City casino resort hotel.
In the most recent incident, Crafts and Engel were held at the Atlantic County Justice Facility for six days and were released on October 15, according to state records.
According to her LinkedIn bio seen by the Post, Crafts had served as a computer teacher at Middle Township Middle School in Cape May since 2016.
The school announced that Crafts was “no longer employed by the district,” in a letter to families and staff on October 19.
https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2026/10/24/police-female-middle-school-teacher-served-as-muscle-atlantic-city-prostitution-shakedown/
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