For one thing, he apparently won a contest for people in that line of work. When the FBI took down his operation last month, it said, agents found two trophies proclaiming him "Pimp of the Year."

That's not all.

Last year, Thompkins gave a writer from Ozone, a hip-hop magazine based in Florida, a daylong tour of his life and business, the FBI said.

The magazine's December issue featured a pimp named "Brandon" who cruises around Las Vegas in his white Range Rover, offering a string of one-liners and holding forth on his "pimptuition."

"I have no moral hang-ups at all about prostitution," the magazine quoted Brandon as saying. "You don't give away anything for free if you can sell it... . Sex isn't the focal point. Money is."

The FBI said there was no doubt that Brandon is Matthew Thompkins. One of his aliases is Brandon Williams.

Thompkins, a 35-year-old native of the Bronx, N.Y., was charged with seven other people last month in federal court in Camden with running a prostitution ring in New York, Boston, Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

Thompkins, who remains in federal custody, kept an expensive house on Second Avenue in Galloway Township where his prostitutes stayed when they worked Atlantic City, authorities said. Five of the women in his stable were snared last month in a state police sting at one of the casinos.

In the Ozone article, Brandon said the only boundary he wouldn't cross was the age of consent.

"Brandon believes that anyone who pimps a woman under 18 deserves to go to jail," the article said.

Thompkins was arrested in a nationwide federal operation called Innocence Lost, which targeted pimps who do just that. The complaint filed in the case described one girl working for Thompkins who told him that she was 14.

"A lot of girls started working for me when they were young also," Thompkins told her, according to the complaint.

The U.S. Attorney's Office acknowledged that it knew about the Ozone article but would not comment further. The article has been turned over to defense attorneys and could become evidence at trial.

Ozone, founded in 2002, has gained notoriety for running revealing interviews with rap music and sports "groupies."

Julia Beverly, Ozone's editor and publisher and author of the Brandon article, wrote in an e-mail that she would not comment on the piece.

Thompkins' attorney, Mitchell Elman of Ozone Park, N.Y., also declined to comment.

Rocco Cipparone, a Haddon Heights lawyer, said it was unlikely that the article would be used at Thompkins' trial. Cipparone represents Melissa Ramlakhan, who has been identified as Thompkins' bookkeeper. Ramlakhan, 28, also has two children with Thompkins.

"How do they prove he is Brandon? To do that and to use his words, they'd have to bring in the reporter, because the article would be hearsay - double hearsay, actually," Cipparone said. "I see a couple of thorny legal issues they'd have to resolve to even use the article."

The FBI would not say how agents know that Thompkins is Brandon. Agents had tapped two of Thompkins' cell phones since August, listening to 4,100 calls.

The article described Brandon as overweight; the FBI lists Thompkins as 6-foot-3 and 350 pounds. The article also said Brandon had been honored as Pimp of the Year at a "Pimps & Hoes ball."

Federal authorities said they did not know the origin of Thompkins' trophies. One stands four feet tall, topped with a scepter-wielding figure in a crown and cape.

An annual gathering of pimps known as the Players Ball, where the Pimp of the Year trophy is handed out, has been chronicled before, notably in the 1999 documentary film American Pimp. The Pimp of the Year is crowned after convincing fellow practitioners that he has made the most money and the big

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