Peppers Nightclub reopened Monday after being shut down due to concerns of prostitution and health violations.

The Boone County Sheriff’s Department arrested the owner of Peppers Nightclub last Friday after finding evidence of prostitution, evidence of food stamp fraud and illegal possession of firearms.

The sheriff’s department arrested Karon Rowe, 61, when executing a warrant for the establishment. They also arrested maintenance worker Jeremy Flanagan, 32.

“We established that he lived there – that they both gave that as their address,” Detective Tom O’Sullivan said. “It’s his residence where we found all this evidence of prostitution and food stamp fraud and unlawful or illegal possession of firearms.”

O’Sullivan said evidence includes a logbook of the names of prostitutes and costumers along with a list of sex acts and costs. They also found used condoms, sex toys and pornographic materials.

O’Sullivan said there have been multiple problems with Peppers in the last two to three years.

“We’ve had numerous shootings, stabbings, disturbances,” he said. “It’s really just been a problem for our department.”

The Boone County Health Department temporarily shut down Peppers following an investigation.

“The Sheriff’s Department was there on their own warrant, and while they were there some of their deputies noticed some conditions that they felt were unsanitary for a food service establishment,” Boone County Health Department spokeswoman Geni Alexander said. “They called us and asked us to send an inspector over, and we did.”

They found 13 critical violations and ten non-critical violations.

“Critical items relate directly to factors which lead to food-born illness,” Alexander said. “Anything over 10 critical violations and we can shut the facility down, so with finding 13 we did shut the facility down. “

Some of the violations were improperly storing chemicals, raw hamburgers stored with ready-to-eat food, evidence of mice, a dish machine that was not sanitizing, the use of Amdro ant-spray which is not for use in food service establishments and expired ground beef.

Peppers was reopened after a follow up investigation Monday after all 13 critical violations were found corrected.

Alexander said this is not the only time the health department has had issues with Peppers.

“We shut them down briefly in June as well for some food violations,” she said.

The sheriff’s department is still continuing the investigation. O’Sullivan said that the names of customers and prostitutes in the logbook are also being looked into.

“We are monitoring the situation very closely,” he said.