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At first, the dancer would clear the patrons’ requests with Gerace, and he would send her to the dealer inside the club, she testified.

But over time, she didn’t have to ask Gerace.

“There was a time I stopped asking because Peter said I didn’t need to anymore,� she said.

She described the patrons as Gerace’s friends.

The drug dealer would emerge from a bathroom with the powdery substance wrapped in a dollar bill for her to give to the patrons, and the dealer would give one to her to use herself, she said.

She said she acted as a go-between for Gerace’s friends seven or eight times over the years she worked at the club, but said she knew another dancer was also a source of cocaine for Gerace and others in the club. The dancer testified she “frequently� saw people in Pharaoh’s using cocaine.

The Buffalo News is not identifying women whom prosecutors say were exploited through their drug use and coerced into engaging in commercial sex acts or other crimes.

Her account on Thursday – the eighth day of testimony in the Joseph Bongiovanni bribery trial – bolstered Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi’s assertion that Pharaoh’s had become “a rampantly drug-involved premises with drugs flowing through there, patrons and dancers using, distributors dealing.�

The ex-dancer’s testimony is the latest development in the government’s case against Bongiovanni, a retired DEA agent facing charges he accepted at least $250,000 in bribes from drug dealers whom he thought were associated with Italian organized crime and shielded them from arrest, as well as provided them with information about investigations and cooperating sources. Many of the charges are related to how he allegedly protected the Ronald Serio drug-trafficking organization, and other counts involve Gerace, who himself is expected to face trial later this year on charges that include bribery, drug trafficking and sex trafficking.

Bongiovanni denies the charges.

The woman who testified Thursday became the second former dancer to take the stand. Federal prosecutors are using testimony from dancers in their case against Bongiovanni. But unlike the ex-dancer who testified last week, the 36-year-old dancer on the stand Thursday did not link the former federal agent to Gerace and the Cheektowaga strip club.

Under cross-examination from Parker MacKay, a defense lawyer for Bongiovanni, the dancer said she could not recall seeing Bongiovanni in the club. Prosecutors did not ask her any questions about Bongiovanni.

The dancer testified she saw law enforcement personnel display their badges at the strip club’s entrance to be allowed to enter for free.

Prosecutors have charged Bongiovanni with protecting Gerace, a childhood friend.

In addition to selling drinks, food and private dances with strippers, Gerace “offered additional services through his strip club to include cocaine and women to high-end clientele – people of prominence in this community that Gerace had become friends,� Tripi said earlier in the trial.

“And that gave him a strong motivation to protect the drug operation he had centered around his strip club,� Tripi said. “And his childhood friend, Joe Bongiovanni, was looking out for him. He had his back.�

In her testimony Thursday, the dancer said she started working at the club in 2012 at the age of 23, lured by good money. She worked there on and off for six years.

She said she used cocaine for the first time in her life when she was called to an upstairs portion of Pharaoh’s not open to the general public. She said she walked down a dark hallway and into a dark room with a chair.

“I was told to sit down� by Gerace, she said.

Gerace sprinkled some cocaine onto a card, and then Gerace held it to her nose, she testified.

“He told me to sniff it,� she said.

“I thought it was OK to keep my job,� she said, tearfully explaining why she followed his instructions. “I was new. I didn’t know.�