Two people were arrested, including a man known in Dallas’ LGBTQ arts and media circles.
By Chase Rogers
Staff Writer
www.dallasnews.com
A warehouse in northwest Dallas was operating as a “sexual encounter center,” police say, that charged admission before officers shut it down and detained dozens of people.
When vice officers executed a search warrant Friday in the 2500 block of Manana Road, they found 50 people along with hundreds of grams of marijuana and psychedelics, according to a police spokesperson and an arrest-warrant affidavit reviewed by The Dallas Morning News.
Attendees who spoke with officers said they had come to Spayse Studios for consensual sex, paying $35 for tickets to attend, the affidavit says.
Police said the admission fee brought the gathering within the scope of the city’s sexually oriented business ordinance, which requires certain businesses to be licensed by the city. The restrictions were tightened in 2023 and, after a court fight delayed their enforcement, have become a key part of the city’s regulatory effort.
Two people, Israel Luna, 53, and Marc Tuton, 42, face charges of operating a sexually oriented business without a license, a Class A misdemeanor. Luna and Tuton declined to comment when reached Monday by The News.
Corbin Rubinson, the police spokesperson, said Spayse Studios appears to have never had a sexually oriented business license. State filings show Luna manages and has ownership of the business.
The people who paid to attend the event were released after police checked for outstanding warrants and found none, an officer wrote in the affidavit.
Luna also faces charges of possession of a controlled substance of more than 400 grams, a first-degree felony; promotion of prostitution, a third-degree felony; and possession of marijuana between 4 ounces and 5 pounds, a state jail felony.
At the studio, police said they found 227 grams of marijuana, 671 grams of psilocybin mushrooms and more than 11,000 grams of THC hash oil, a concentrated cannabis extract, the affidavit says.
Luna told police he would receive financial compensation for sexual events he hosted, including those uploaded online and promoted on social media, the affidavit says.
Dallas Voice, a Dallas-based LGBTQ news outlet, has profiled Luna as a local filmmaker and promoted The Gayborhood, a web series and YouTube show that Luna wrote and directed.
Leo Cusimano, publisher of Dallas Voice, said Monday that Luna has worked with the outlet as an independent contractor. He declined to comment on the arrest.
Public Safety Reporter
Chase Rogers covers the Dallas Police Department, Dallas Fire-Rescue, and broader public safety issues in Dallas. He grew up in Granbury and studied journalism at Texas State University in San Marcos. Before joining The News, he reported for the Austin American-Statesman and the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. His work has earned investigative reporting and Freedom of Information awards, including Texas Managing Editor’s Star Reporter of the Year in 2022. He can be reached at 361-239-6527 and on Signal at crogers.95.
