The former detective who worked as a bodyguard for Anna Gristina said he never suspected she might be running a prostitution ring.
“Why would I know?” asked Sylvan Francis, who spent 17 years on the force and was even assigned to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
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Francis, 54, would not say how he got hooked up with Gristina or why she needed security services, but he insisted it was all aboveboard.
“When I get an assignment, a legitimate assignment to deal with a client with a company or whatever, there’s a level of confidentiality that goes along with that,” he told the Daily News on Monday.
“But I can tell you this: It had nothing to do with what she’s being charged with.”
Francis retired from the NYPD in 2002 and was shocked that his name surfaced after her arrest.
“Everybody is putting a cloud of illegality around this,” he said as he stepped out of a Mercedes in the driveway of his colonial-style home in Elizabeth, N.J.
“Anybody that knows my reputation, anybody who I’ve ever been associated with, knows I’ve never been involved in any type of illegality.
“I’m being dragged through the mud,” he complained.
He said he has not heard from prosecutors who charged Gristina with turning an upper East Side pad into a brothel.
And he said he hasn’t talked to Gristina in years — but still has fond memories of her.
“One of the nicest people I’ve ever met is Anna,” Francis said. “But as far as my association into what is being alleged that she’s done, you’ve got the wrong guy here.”
