Care to document this, Loran? Or is this another of your fantasies?
For Harmony (our resident current events specialist), Ray, and anyone who is interested.
http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/siii.htm
http://www.webcom.com/hrin/magazine/jul ... slave.html
http://www.humantrafficking.com/humantr ... SNBC_1.htm
http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/29229.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3071965/
http://news.scotsman.com/ViewArticle.as ... id=3352430
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/euro ... afficking/
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/euro ... 218223.php
http://www.no-fortress-europe.eu/upload ... icking.pdf
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/20 ... 664d1.html
http://stacey.blogs.com/photos/adam_red ... 04349.html
http://www.facetoface.bg/facetoface/hom ... enDocument
http://www.afajournal.org/2004/april/404culture.asp
You might also try reading
The Porn Merchants, by Gary Potter.
The following is very long, but I'm sure all the public school educated smart people here will be able to handle it. I could not find it on the Web anymore, and it may no longer be available there, but its required reading on the subject. I'm putting it up from my own hard disk, where its been residing for several years. Some of this information (in fact, probably most of it), is available on the Net in bits and pieces, but this essay consolidates a lot of information into a single piece.
[quote]
NOTES on the HISTORY of PORNOGRAPHY
Mafia
Organized crime has long played a significant role in porn distribution.
Numerous American law enforcement agencies during the 1970s and 1980s declared that the Mafia controlled porn. (See for example: (1) U.S. Department of Justice, Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, Final Report (particularly pages 1040-1240), Washington, 1986. (2) Gary Potter. The Porn Merchants. Kendall Hunt. Dubuque, Iowa. 1986. (3) Series in the LA Times Calendar section on the Perainos, 6/13/82 and 6/20/82. (4) Parade magazine 8/19/79 (5) Forbes magazine 9/18/78 (6) report by the Task Force on Organized Crime published by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration as quoted in the 1/30/84 Congressional Record – Senate, beginning on page 845.)
"You cannot be in the field and distribute pornography without their consent," said FBI agent Homer Young in 1986. (Meese Commission, p. 1040) The owner and operator of an "adult" bookstore, and veteran of the porn trade, provided similar testimony to the 1986 Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography (best known as the Meese Commission after President Reagen’s attorney general of the time Edwin Meese).
Interviewer: …If the mob says, "I do not want this, boy."
Subject: You don’t sell it. Even if they don’t even talk to you. You’re not going to sell it nowhere. If you go to the store on 14th street and put in there, they’re gonna bust his ass. Or they’re gonna break your legs when you start going through them. There was a man who went from New York City…went into Atlanta. Had films to sell… They found him at the airport, with a $5,000 Rolex watch on and about eight grand in his pocket, and four rolls of film in his hands, with his head blown up in the trunk of his car. Nobody robbed him, nobody took a dime off him. They didn’t even take the film. But he was at the airport with a New York ticket shoved in his coat pocket. Don’t come down from New York, selling unless you’ve been sent down. (Meese Commission p. 1041)
Examination of the industry’s distribution structure led many to believe that organized porn was simply another face of organized crime. For instance, the Organized Crime Division of the Washington D.C. Police Department said in 1978: "The pornography industry is characterized by a vertical distribution and a pyramid structure with a limited number of documented distributors within individual states. Porn is initially supplied to national distributors who then sell to inter-state distributors who in turn distribute to intra-state distributors.
1. "This limited number of pornography distributors may indicate the lucrative profits in the distributorship and production of porn with the capability of dictating prices to independent bookstore owners. As an example of high profits... A magazine can be produced for approximately fifty cents; wholesaled for five dollars and retailed for ten dollars. This computes to a 1900% profit production to consumer sale. In general, there is no competition or price wars, which indicates price control." (Organized Crime’s Involvement in the Pornography Industry, Investigative Services Division, Metropolitan Police Dept., Washington, D.C..1978.)
The report revealed the methods used by the Mafia's pornographers to avoid detection by law enforcement:
1. Names of corporate officers are used without the individual's knowledge or consent.
2. Notary Publics are employed to notarize signatures without confrontation of signees.
3. Rubber stamps of signatures are used without the authorizing individual's knowledge.
4. Corporate names are constantly changed.
5. Controllers do not appear on corporate papers but are major stock holders.
6. Pornography entrepreneurs appear as corporate officers for a legitimate business which may have pornography distributors as subsidiaries.
An Investigator with the Solicitor General's Office in Fulton County (Atlanta), Georgia, Robert K. Abel, said in a report at a seminar on obscenity conducted by the National College of District Attorneys in November of 1981: "The tremendous profits that are made (by organized crime) in the pornography business are used in several ways.
"1. A large portion of the profits are taken by the top people within the organizations in the form of salaries and fringe benefits.
"2. Much of the money made stays within the organization because of constant expansion and the large overhead costs of maintaining warehouses, stores, inventories...
"3. Money is invested in legitimate businesses such as real estate, record companies, night clubs, restaurants and others.
"4. A percentage of the profits is funneled into other illegal ventures including drugs, gambling and loan sharking."
Retired FBI agent William P. Kelly told the Meese Commission: "In my opinion, based upon twenty-three years of experience in pornography and obscenity investigations and study, it is practically impossible to be in the retail end of the pornography industry without dealing in some fashion with organized crime…" (Meese Commission)
Officer Thomas Bohling of the Chicago Police Department Organized Crime Division, Vice Control Section reported, "it is the belief of state, federal, and local law enforcement that the pornography industry is controlled by organized crime families. If they do not own the business outright, they most certainly extract street tax from independent smut peddlers." (Ibid. p. 1048)
Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates told the Meese Commission: "Organized crime infiltrated the pornography industry in Los Angeles in 1969 due to its lucrative financial benefits. By 1975, organized crime controlled eighty percent of the industry and it is estimated that this figure is between eighty-five to ninety percent today." (Ibid)
Based upon such evidence, the 1986 Meese Commission echoed the findings of such earlier reports as the 1978 FBI Report Regarding the Extent of Organized Crime Involvement in Pornography:
"In conclusion, organized crime involvement in pornography…is indeed significant, and there is an obvious national control directly, and indirectly by organized crime figures of that industry in the United States. Few pornographers can operate in the United States independently without some involvement with organized crime. The huge profits gathered by organized crime in this area and redirected to other lucrative forms of crime, such as narcotics and investment in legitimate business enterprises, are certainly cause for national concern…" (Meese, p. 1070)
A police captain in Fayetteville, North Carolina, warned the Meese Commission: "Left unchecked, organized crime can suck the lifeblood out of a community. Many times, their enterprises have been viewed as "service" oriented or victimless crimes. However, it tears at the moral fiber of society and through unbridled corruption, it can weaken the government." (Meese, p. 1071)
Through the early 1990s, many organized crime experts considered the American Mafia a.k.a. Cosa Nostra (means "our thing") the most dangerous criminal organization in the world. (Goombata, 1992.) "In the past few decades, when every other social institution in America has either been shattered or changed forever, the Mafia has continued to thrive," write the authors of Goombata, a 1992 book on Gambino family leader John Gotti. "Like a virulent parasite, it has adapted to the host body, fastening on whatever the law or social convention allowed: organized kidnapping was abandoned for rum-running during the Prohibition, bootlegging was replaced by the black market during World War II, which was replaced by illegal gambling and narcotics trafficking, and so on.""
A direct descendent of the Sicilian organization transformed by US mores and modern corporate methods, the American Mafia is a coalition of 24 separate groups (each known as a "family") who mainly reside in New York. Families are composed of "made men" (those sworn into the family, probably no more than 2,000 in the U.S.) and "associates" (those who work actively with the Mafia but have not been sworn in). In the early 1990s, law enforcement estimated Cosa Nostra’s annual income at $60-$100 billion. A substantial part of that comes from the sex trade, of which porn is a significant component. Or used to be.
Organized crime began its infiltration of the porn industry in the 1960s. Grand juries in New York and Bexar County, Texas said in the early '70s that organized crime controlled 90% of America's hardcore pornography business.
In his 1986 book Porn Merchants, Professor Gary W. Potter of the Administration of Justice department at the Pennsylvania State University, wrote "that any business that offers such a large flow of hard cash, little competition from "respectable" businesses, and a clandestine environment, would inevitably attract organized crime."
Cash businesses such as porn allow the mob to introduce money earned from drugs and other illegal schemesinto the general economy. Joseph, Anthony and Louis Peraino, for instance, used profits from Deep Throat to build a vast financial empire in the 1970s that included, according to the FBI, "ownership of garment companies in New York and Miami, investment companies... The Perainos also may have used profits from Deep Throat to finance drug smuggling operation in the Caribbean." (LAT 6/13/82)
The Peraino family, the Mafia's leading direct producer of porn, emerged out of the bloody Brooklyn gang bang of 1931 known as the Castellammarese War. Named for one of the factions - immigrants from the town of Castellamare del Golfo in Sicily - it was the first great Mafia power struggle in America. Such legendary mobsters as Lucky Luciano and Vito Genovese rode to power on the killings.
Among those who died was Giuseppe Peraino, a member of the Profaci crime family which became part of the Colombo family. Giuseppe left a wife Grazia and two sons, Anthony, 16, and Joseph, 5, who later produced and distributed the most profitable film of all time - Deep Throat. In the same year as his father died, a prosecutor charged Anthony with committing homicide by auto. As with his next six arrests, Anthony escaped conviction.
Law enforcement considers the late Anthony and his brother Joseph as "made" members of the Colombo crime family. Officers call the brothers "Big Tony" and "Joe the Whale" for they each weigh about 300 pounds.
An initiated member of the Colombo Mafia family in New York, Anthony Peraino jumped in at the start of the burgeoning porn business, which became organized crime's biggest new moneymaker after drugs. Since the early '70s, pornographers have grossed at least a billion dollars a year. Law enforcement estimates the Mafia's take as about half.
In the late 1960s, Peraino and the Colombo family led Cosa Nostra into porn. John "Sonny" Franzese, a Colombo member, began supplying 8-millimeter hardcore stag movies to the coin-operated peep show machines in sex shops around New York's Time Square. The Colombo family soon controlled its own plant for processing 8mm movies - All-State Film Labs in Brooklyn. Anthony Peraino's 26-year old son, Louis "Butchie" Peraino officially owned the lab. A capo in the Bonnano crime family, Michael Zaffarano a.k.a. Mickey Z. ran All-State's porn operations.
Anthony Peraino and Michael Zaffarano dominated distribution of loops to Mafia-controlled outlets in New York City. According to the FBI, they sold their films secretly out of automobile trunks, coffee catering trucks, unmarked warehouses, several restaurants, a chain of meat markets and a Brooklyn candy store. Their primary sales representative was Cosmo Cangiano from Brooklyn, whose arrest record included larceny, forgery, mail theft and interstate shipment of stolen securities. Cangiano became "a millionaire at least four times over" from a variety of illegal activities, according to the sworn affidavit of an FBI agent who monitored the operations of Peraino and Zaffarano for five years. Besides selling porn to customers in New York, Pittsburgh, South Carolina, and Baltimore, Cosmo dealt in counterfeit Chanel perfume, Omega wristwatches, Department of Motor Vehicle documents and such false identification as licenses, registrations, birth certificates and Social Security Cards. (LAT 6/13/82)
Louis Peraino entered the legitimate movie business through All-State Film Labs. When he presided over Bryanston Distributors in its Hollywood heyday, a company brochure said it all began in 1965 when "Mr. Peraino combined a hobby and a deep interest in cinema techniques by forming his own motion-picture processing laboratory All-State Film Labs, specializing in processing and editing facilities and high-speed animation..."
Law enforcement investigators consider Louis, along with his older brother Joseph S. Peraino, a Colombo family "associate" rather than a "made" member. One veteran investigator echoes the consensus among his peers when he says of Louis, "His grandfather was in organized crime, his father is in it, his uncle is in it, his brother is in it, so he's in it. That's the way it is. You don't get out."
That "You don't get out" theme flows through the romantic Godfather saga, the book and movie that defines the Mafia in the minds of millions of Americans. "A scene right out of The Godfather" was a common refrain amongst those who talked about Louis to the LA Times for its 1982 piece on the Perainos. Many described Louis as a Michael Corleone figure - the brightest of the Peraino men who's driven by a desire for respectability. Actor Al Pacino portrays Michael Corleone, the college-educated favorite son of Mafia boss Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), in Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather movies. Michael wants no part of the family business but gets sucked in after his father is shot and ultimately becomes the godfather.
"There is nothing ominous about Butchie Peraino," movie producer Frank Avianca told the 6/13/82 LA Times. "He's a big teddy bear." Peraino financed and distributed Avianca's 1975 movie The Human Factor, and Sandy Howard's The Devil's Rain and Echoes of Summer. "Lou wanted to make an image for himself as a decent man," says Howard. "He tried to build a legitimate business."
Movie distributor Fred Biersdorf says "Louis Peraino was the best, the nicest guy. You'd think that you hadknown him for years when you first met him." Biersdorf distributed all of Peraino's legitimate movies in the Southwest U.S.. "It was the best business relationship I've ever had."
Linda Lovelace gives a different picture of Butchie in her 1980 bestseller Ordeal. Louis was "heavy and sloppy... What I remember most about him was his loud mouth. He was always yelling at somebody about something. And he never went anywhere without his bodyguard, Vinnie."
The Perainos didn't know what to do with the large profits they received from Deep Throat. "Here were a couple of guys from Brooklyn who never had much money before and all of a sudden they're millionaires," a lawyer who represented the mobsters told the 6/13/82 LA Times. "The amount of money coming in was frightening. Nobody could have handled it. Whatever you've heard about how much Deep Throat earned, it's underestimated. I'd say that $100 million in gross income would be underestimated, and most of it was cash."
Dallas-based movie distributor Fred Biersdorf remembers the heady days in Louis Peraino's New York office at 630 9th Ave. "You just wouldn't believe the calls that Lou was getting from people who wanted a print of the movie to watch. Prominent people, government officials. And I remember that whenever somebody's secretary would call for them, Lou would get on the phone and say, 'Hey, if he wants a print then he can damn well call me himself.' There were dozens of phones on the table. And at 9 o'clock in the morning there was all this food - sandwiches and cole-slaw and bottles of wine. And Nicky and Dicky were coming in and whispering in his ear and it was unbelievable, out of The Godfather." (Ibid.)
A 1975 LAPD memo said that the success of Deep Throat prompted a large migration of major New York mob figures to Los Angeles. The report warned that, once established in porn, the mob's next logical move would be into the legitimate Hollywood movie business. And that's what happened.
In September of 1973, a Hollywood showbiz paper announced that "two New York businessmen" named Louis and Joseph Peraino had established "a major new film production and distribution company" called Bryanston, with plans for making "at least 10 feature motion pictures within the next year."
The Perainos established Bryanston in July, 1971, shortly after creating Damiano Film Productions. The two were "twin companies engaged in the financing, acquisition, production and distribution of motion picture film products of every kind, nature and gauge," according to a joint company prospectus that Louis Peraino prepared for a New York bank. Damiano made porn while Bryanston went legit.
One of the first movies that Bryanston financed and produced in-house (for $600,000) was The Last Porno Flick, released in August, 1974 as The Mad, Mad Moviemakers. Two cab-driving buddies raise $22,000 to make a porno by telling their Italian family and friends they're making a religious movie. Complications arise when the porno becomes a hit. The film, which bombed, also features a Brando-esque Mafia boss. The Last Porno Flick pokes fun at the Perainos experience with Deep Throat, which cost them $22,000 to make. According to a Bryanston press release, the film was "based on a story and concept by Joseph Torchio."
As Louis Peraino took his share of Deep Throat profits and turned his attention to mainstream movies in 1973, father Anthony and uncle Joseph took over the distribution of Throat, shifting the base of operations from New York to a network of companies in Miami. But Louis oversaw LA area distribution of the porno even as he pursued success in Hollywood. One of his key Throat reps was former Brooklynite Joseph (Junior) Torchio, described by one LAPD investigator as "the best-known trunk-buster (auto break-in artist) in New York." In 1973, Joseph became Bryanston's director of finance.
Torchio first came to the attention of police in 1969 when, on March 14, he set up the shooting of Mafia associate Alfred Adorno. Junior, who didn't appear to have an IQ above room temperature, moved to LA later that year and set up a porn production company with William Amerson and Jacob (Jack) Molinas, described in a California Department of Justice report as a "con man, swindler, disbarred attorney and former pro basketball player [Fort Wayne Pistons]."
An All American at Columbia University in the 1950s, Molinas was convicted in 1963 as the "master fixer" in a point shaving scandal that rocked college basketball in 1961. After his release from prison in 1968, Molinas moved to Los Angeles and entered porn. He dealt with several known figures in organized crime including Michael Zaffarano. Torchio and Molinas received loans of $250,000 from Louis Peraino in 1973 and 1974, on which they defaulted. With partner Bernard Gussoff, Molinas used his money to set up a fur importing company called Berjac as a front for distributing porn.
In September of 1974, Bryanston filed a lawsuit against Molinas for non-payment of the loan. Two months later, Gussoff was beaten to death in his Los Angeles apartment. The murder was never solved. Less than a year later, in August, 1975, Molinas was shot and killed as he stood with his girlfriend in the backyard of his Hollywood Hills home. Three weeks later, Torchio, a day before he was scheduled to talk to the feds, was struck by a car and killed on the Las Vegas strip. All three murders appeared to be mob hits.
In 1974, trade papers like Daily Variety heralded Louis Peraino's Bryanston as the hottest independent distribution company in the motion picture industry. In October, 1974, the company rode a crest of hits: Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, Return of the Dragon and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. With Chainsaw and Throat, Louis produced the sex and violence trendsetters of the late 20th Century.
A prominent movie producer recalled a business meeting with Louis, saying "I didn't know if I was negotiating for my picture or my life." During a disagreement, "There were threats made against me... My nose was threatened, my ears..." One respected studio executive was unnerved when an LA Times reporter called to ask him about an experience he had with Perainos. "No way," the executive said. "As far as I'm concerned, this phone call never happened." Then he hung up.
Director Tom Hooper, who made The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Poltergeist, begged off an LA Times interview about the Perainos and Bryanston. "All I know is that about two months after Chain Saw was released, I heard a rumor that Bryanston was a Mafia operation... If these guys are behind door No. 1, then who's behind door No. 2 or door No. 3?" Other movie makers describe Louis Peraino - who was arrested in Brooklyn in 1971 for chasing his wife down the street with a gun - as a warm family man.
Al Ruddy, who produced The Godfather, made a 1975 animation feature Coonskin that was distributed by Bryanston. "I knew Lou had done Deep Throat and I know that pornography is generally controlled by certain people. It didn't matter to me."
It didn't to most persons in Hollywood who did business with the Mafia front company. Many knew about it, but few cared.
Paramount financed Ruddy's Coonskin. In an unusual move that smelt like a payoff to the Mafia for their cooperation with the filming of The Godfather, the Barry Diller operated company gave the picture to Bryanston to distribute.
In a 1976 confidential memo, the California Department of Justice placed Bryanston at the top of a list of "key corporations," believed to be "controlled" by the mob. "It appears that Bryanston coordinates the nationwide distribution of full-length films for organized crime."
Not only does Hollywood like the Mafia, but the Mafia likes Hollywood. Show biz is not only fun, but a great way to launder money. Most movie makers will do anything to get financing for their projects, and couldn't care less about using proceeds from drugs. Because the law requires reports to the IRS on all cash transactions in excess of $10,000, the immense profits of organized crime cannot be deposited in a bank. Instead, criminals clean their money by passing it through legitimate cash businesses like bars, parking lots and movie companies.
An FBI agent told the LA Times in its June, 1982 series on the Perainos that Hollywood doesn't care about dirty money. "If you find that, in general, the people who should be your witnesses are not willing to give you the sweat off their brow, then you realize that you are faced with a situation where there is a community acceptance of a set of standards that might be offensive in some areas, but not here. And we have to look at it that way, just like we look at pornography, based on community standards. Unfortunately, we have a set of standards about how to finance motion pictures in Hollywood that is incredibly lax. In the last ten years or so, we've made six or seven efforts to try to ferret our allegations of organized crime in the movie business. And we got zero support from the industry. They don't view it as a threat. It's good money to them. It's a way of life, condoned, even embraced. Nobody wants to expose it." (LA Times 6/15/82)
The Perainos distributed Deep Throat between 1973 and 1976, using "checkers" and "sweepers" who traveled the country changing aliases and meeting secretly in hotel rooms and public restrooms to exchange information and cash. Federal agents shadowed them, as they had all of the Perainos' porn operations since 1969.
In August, 1974, a federal grand jury in Memphis indicted Louis Peraino, along with his father Anthony and uncle Joseph on charges of transporting obscene materials (Deep Throat) across state lines. Damiano Film Productions also was indicted but not Damiano for he no longer held an interest in either Deep Throat or the production company.
"With a gun at this head" as one porn distributor put it, Damiano sold his interest in the movie to Louis Peraino in July, 1972, for $25,000. When a reporter said to Damiano that he'd received a lousy deal, Damiano replied, 'I can't talk about it.' When the reporter persisted, Damiano said, 'You want me to get both my legs broken?'" (New York Times 10/12/75)
A few years later, when mainstream director John Landis of Kentucky Fried Movie, Animal House and Blues Brothers fame became interested in shooting a porno, even hiring Terri Hall whose emergency appendectomy postponed the shooting, he received a visit from two goons who told him to stay away from the biz if he knew what was good for him. He did.
In a front page article on the mob's infiltration of the porn industry 10/12/75, New York Times journalist Nicholas Gage described brothers Anthony and Joseph S. Peraino as the "most successful of all Mafia figures involved in the production and distribution of hardcore films. Moreover, the great success of these pornographic films has given several porno movie makers with Mafia connections the money to go into the production and distribution of legitimate motion pictures.
"Louis Peraino has used profits from Deep Throat to help establish a company called Bryanston Distributors, which has become a major distributor of legitimate motion pictures.
"A spokesman for Louis Peraino insisted that neither his father Anthony nor his uncle Joseph is in any way involved in Bryanston."
A day later, a similar report published in the New York Post, headlined "How the Mob Moved Into Times Square" linked Louis Peraino to the Mafia, identifying him as a "reputed" member of the Colombo crime family.
Former Bryanston publicist Patty Zimmerman says that the company's Beverly Hills Office didn't receive a single inquiry from the West Coast media following the New York articles. Nor did the articles cause much of a stir among Bryanston employees. "I didn’t want to know anything more than I needed to do my job," said one employee. "I didn’t ask people who came into the office their business..."
Two months later, Variety published a long and upbeat report on Bryanston, making no mention of Deep Throat, the coming Memphis trial or the NY newspaper allegations. The trades gushing coverage of Bryanston peaked in January 1976 in a Variety article headlined "Bryanston Expanding Its Operations": "The Bryanston operation is seeking out producers and talent who may have the idea but lack either the capital or the deal. Company appears willing to look at anything beyond the fringe and take chances accordingly."
Along with Harry Reems and eight other defendants, Anthony, Joseph and Louis Peraino went on trial in Memphis on March 1, 1976. Prosecutor Larry Parrish, an assistant District Attorney, put together his case with help from the FBI, the IRS, and the U.S. Justice Department organized-crime strike forces in Brooklyn and Miami.
The government spent a million dollars to protect the moral standards of the citizens of Memphis. Or so it seemed. But Bruce Kahmer, the attorney who represented Harry Reems in the case, says that "it wasn't an obscenity trial at all - it was a racketeering and tax evasion trial." After the case, Parrish took over the Brooklyn Strike Force which only investigates organized crime.
The prosecutor spent most of the trial describing how Deep Throat's distribution system worked. He called more than 50 witnesses who'd worked for the Perainos. Parrish supplemented the testimony with charts and graphs of the operation, leading the jury through the maze step by step. Defense attorneys offered little opposition to the government's description. Instead, they concentrated on the issue of Deep Throat's supposed obscenity.
The prosecution showed that after the film's New York debut in June 1972, the Perainos distributed Deep Throat in the regular fashion through shipping prints to theaters by U.S. Mail and Parcel Post. Even though it was a federal crime to transport an obscene movie across state lines, the risk of prosecution seemed slight because the law contained no precise definition of obscenity. But this changed dramatically in June, 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark "community standards" decision on pornography.
In a five-to-four decision largely dictated by the four Nixon appointees, the High Court removed from the language of the law the "utterly without redeeming social value" phrase that had long been the favorite loophole for pornographers. As a result of the new law, any prosecutor wishing to ban a sexual work no longer had to prove that it was "utterly without" value; it merely had to be lacking in "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value" to be considered obscene. In other words, Times Square and Sunset Boulevard no longer determined censorship laws across the nation, for now "community standards," instead of "national standards" ruled First Amendment Obscenity cases. This meant that magazines like Playboy and Penthouse or films like Last Tango in Paris might be banned in towns with conservative sexual values.
A few days after the Miller ruling, police in Salt Lake City closed a theater showing Last Tango. Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said that it was now impossible to determine in advance whether a film violated obscenity law because the Supreme Court's ruling created "50 or more fragmented opinions as to what constituted obscenity." The New York Times wrote that Miller gave "license to local censors. In the long run it will make every local community and every state the arbiter of acceptability, thereby adjusting all sex-related literary, artistic and entertainment production to the lowest common denominator of toleration. Police-court morality will have a heyday." (Thy Neighbor's Wife, p. 338)
In Hollywood, two studios negotiating to film Hubert Selby's book about working-class homosexuals, Last Exit to Brooklyn, abandoned the project. Art directors for Playboy, Screw and other sex publications quickly modified their front covers. Customers at adult bookstores across the country stood in line to buy merchandise they feared would soon be banished from the shelves.
"The immediate effect of this decision," said Bob Guccione of Penthouse, "will be to drive a multibillion-dollar industry underground - and that means graft and crime in the real sense. It's the same thing as a return to prohibition."
After Miller, pornographers who lacked the money to pay attorneys got out of the business. "Miller made it all but impossible to distribute a film across state lines," says Arlene Elster, who now runs a commercial plant nursery in Northern California. "I knew the films would never get better if you couldn't distribute them, so I gave up and got out."
The Miller decision was bad news for the distributors of Deep Throat for it meant that they were vulnerable to federal prosecution based on the most blue-nosed views of any Bible belt township. So the Perainos developed a new distribution system to confound the feds. "Checkers" carried Deep Throat across state lines to adult theaters. Perainos reps then stayed on to count the customers and collect at the end of the day's showings their share of the take, usually half. Sweepers moved from checker to checker collecting money and shipping it or carrying it back to company offices in New Jersey and Florida. Those who didn't cooperate received threats of physical harm.
Jim and Artie Mitchell originally confined Behind the Green Door to a handful of theaters because they feared harassment from the FBI and the Justice Department. While getting busted for obscenity in a city like San Francisco was a hassle, what producers mainly feared were the feds. If a California pornographer got convicted of showing an obscene film in a place like Cincinnati, which, after Miller, was more likely, and if the feds could prove the person shipped the film over state lines, the pornographer was in trouble. Defending yourself in federal court takes more time and money, and the penalties were more severe.
With people standing in line to see Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones and Behind the Green Door, the Mafia recognized an opportunity. Through their organization they could distribute films under the table, taking the heat off producers, or they could copy the film and distribute it themselves. In 1973, representatives for godfather Carlo Gambino (Robert De Salvo and James Bochis) tried for the rights to Behind the Green Door. They told Jim and Artie Mitchell that they could share the profits of national distribution of Green Door 50/50 or they would simply steal the prints to the movie and cut them out of the money altogether. The brothers refused the offer. A few weeks later they discovered that Gambino had made hundreds of pirated versions of the movie, creaming the market.
On April 30, 1976, the Memphis jury found the Perainos and all other defendants guilty on conspiring to distribute obscenity across state lines. Louis and his uncle Joseph S. Peraino received one-year prison sentences and fines of $10,000. The judge delayed sentencing of Anthony Peraino until his capture. The three Peraino owned companies, Bryanston, Damiano and Plymouth, received $10,000 fines each.
A month after the trial, Bryanston closed up its West Coast office and disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving behind a score of puzzled employees and a trail of debt. In addition to nearly $750,000 in taxes, the company owed undetermined millions throughout the movie marketplace. In August 1976, Louis Peraino made his last public statement to the movie industry, in the pages of Variety. "Don't worry about it. I can't say more now...but I'll be back in business."
Louis returned to legitimate entertainment in September 1977, lending $50,000 to the owner of a Los Angeles-based music company in return for a 40% interest. According to the LAPD, Peraino showed up at the music company office carrying an envelope which contained a revolver and a document naming Peraino sole owner of the company. Louis put the envelope on the desk. Upon seeing it, a partner signed the document and went into hiding.
Peraino's $50,000 loan was in the form of a check drawn on a bank in Panama, which eventually bounced. Louis took over the company, and milked it for cash before moving on to establish Arrow Film & Video with offices in New York City and Van Nuys. An LAPD officer, Sgt. Joseph Ganley, testified in the FBI's MIPORN case that Louis Peraino on two occasions in 1979 threatened the owners of Los Angeles-area porn film companies with "bodily harm" if they continued to reproduce and sell prints of Deep Throat without paying the royalties demanded by Peraino.
An inspiration for Mario Puzo's godfather character, Carlo Gambino operated his porno business via his lieutenant, Ettore (Terry) Zappi and Zappi's son Anthony. When the video cassette revolution arrived, Carlo set up companies that handled the new business, which his family soon dominated. "Gambino was much more circumspect about his connection to the extremely profitable field of child pornography. His family dominated that trade, despite the reluctance of some Gambino chieftains; their normally quiescent wives were raising hell about being involved in a "filthy" business.
"Gambino, a premier criminal capitalist, plowed profits from crime into cash-transaction businesses in which the proceeds of illegal activities could be hidden. Favorites included garbage collection, vending machines, trucking, construction, garment manufacture, restaurants, and assorted restaurant supply companies. All of these specialized businesses were suited perfectly for Gambino's favorite ploy, the "vertical monopoly," in which he controlled the business, it's workers and largest customers. The potential for profit under such an arrangement, a monopolist's dream, were breathtaking." (Goombata, p. 77-78)
According to Jimmy Fratianno, Carlo Gambino protected porn king Reuben Sturman. (Demaris, 1981)
Competition can be deadly when the mob enters the game. Fighting between mobsters over the sex industry killed at least 25 persons in the last half of the 1970s in New York City, Long Island, upper New York State and northern New Jersey. At stake were mob-dominated printing, distribution and sales of X-rated books, magazines, toys, and movies in addition to control of massage parlors and other forms of prostitution.
The book Murder Machine details the exploits of the DeMeo gang who worked for the Gambino family. Roy DeMeo and his boss Anthony "Nino" Gaggi were made members of the Gambinos. Nino was particularly close with Carlo Gambino and his successor as godfather, Paul Castellano.
In the late 1960s and early '70s, Paul Rothenberg, with his partner Anthony Argilla, dominated the processing of porno films in New York. DeMeo muscled in on the business and on July 27, 1973, murdered Paul. "After you kill someone, anything is possible," the 32-year old told his followers.
Over the next 15 years, Roy and his gang mowed down about 100 persons. As well as dealing in extortion, car theft, drugs and murder, DeMeo bought and sold porn, specializing in children and animals.
In early 1970, elements of the Colombo, Bonanno, Gambino and DeCavalcante crime families moved from the East Coast and established porn operations in California. As money from Deep Throat poured into organized crime through the Perainos, the Mob increased its infiltration of the porn business. During the mid 1970s, they engaged in extortion and violence to control independent pornographers.
A report by the Administrative Vice Division of the Los Angeles Police Department estimated that by 1976 organized crime controlled 80% of the Los Angeles-based porno movie production and distribution business. "Organized crime families from Chicago, New York, New Jersey, and Florida are openly controlling and directing the major pornography operations in Los Angeles."
An investigative report submitted to the California Legislature by the Attorney General of California discussed organized crime infiltration into the pornography industry:
"In the early 1970s...four organized crime groups moved in on pornography operations in California. They met relatively little resistance because the weak-structured organized crime group of Southern California lacked the strength to deter the infiltration of organized crime from the East.
"Organized crime figures first focused on production and retail operations in California. In this effort, they established national distribution networks and effectively resorted to illegal and unfair business tactics. The newly arrived organized crime groups formed film duplication companies which illegally duplicated the films of independent producers and displayed them at nationwide organized crime controlled theaters. Faced with continued piracy and lost profits, many legitimate producers were forced to deal with organized crime controlled distribution companies and film processing labs.
"After gaining control of many wholesale and retail companies, organized crime forced other independent retailers out of business through price manipulation. Wholesale prices to independent retailers were raised while prices to organized crime controlled outlets were lowered. Independents were undersold by organized crime controlled outlets until lost profits forced them out of business. Many competitors were bought out which allowed the subsequent raising of prices in other parts of the market."
Each of the major Cosa Nostra crime families in New York maintained West Coast representatives. Robert DiBernado represented the DeCavalcantes, Thomas Ricciardi the Colombos and William Haimowitz (William Bittner) the Gambinos. Riccardi worked frequently with LA pornographer William Noel Fine who operated Fine Films and Billy Fine Productions. Haimowitz was raised by Carlo Gambino's lieutenant Ettore Zappi and said that Zappi sent him to California to corner the porn market for the Gambino family.
Mafia member Pasquale John Antonelli moved to California from New Jersey in 1965 and prospered from operating massage parlors and adult bookstores. He became the nucleus of a small band of Italian-American hoods who moved to San Diego from the Northeast. They owned a concentrated number of storefront operations in a four square downtown block of San Diego featuring adult bookstores, peep shows, massage parlors and hardcore movies.
Though living in Cleveland, Reuben Sturman made his presence felt in California porn, taking over the operations of Milton Luros in 1974. By 1986, according to the Los Angeles Police, companies controlled by Sturman owned 580 of the 765 city’s adult video arcade machines.
During the 1970s, Sturman opened up porn distribution centers in most of America's largest cities. His first was Cuyahoga News named for the river. As Reuben grew, he thought more grandly. He founded Sovereign News, then Royal News, Castle, Noble, Crown and the rest. Reuben came to regard his choice of names as a mistake for their similarity enabled the government to trace his network.
A store owner in San Diego, described Sturman's control of porn. "People are afraid of him because of his power. He could just cut people off. You could just die out there. Paranoia sets in and I'm sure he uses it to his advantage."
Reuben structured his many companies from video production to adult bookstores in a honeycomb of nominees, false names and dead associates to avoid obscenity and tax prosecutions. Over the years a number of Sturman's associates were convicted on obscenity charges and other violations of the law, but Reuben evaded the consequences of his deeds.
A 1982 Report to the Governor of Ohio named Sturman as an associate of Ettore (Terry) Zappi - Carlo Gambino's lieutenant. Sturman ate many meals with Carmine (The Snake) Persico, the head of the Colombo crime family in New York now serving a 100-year sentence on his conviction for loan-sharking, racketeering and murder.
Michael Zaffarano, a captain in the crime family of Joseph Bonanno and Carmine Galante, operated J & G Sales and Miracle Film Releasing Corporation of Los Angeles with partners Stuart Charles Segall and Tommy Sinopoli - associated with the DeCavalcante family in New Jersey.
Segall began his career in entertainment as a porn actor working for Ted Paramore, later becoming a director and businessman. With Theodore Gaswirth and John Holmes' manager William Amerson, Stu owned Capricorn Industries in Beverly Hills.
Zaffarano served as president of Stu Segall Associates which had offices in New York and Hollywood. During the 1970s, Zaffarano and Segall directed the nationwide Pussycat Cinema chain of adult theaters. In the 1990s, Stu became a powerful producer of mainstream entertainment, including the TV show Renegade.
During his heyday in the 1970s, Michael Thevis owned about 40% of the nation's smut business with an annual take of $100 million. He controlled his more than 400 bookstores and theaters in the Southeast United States through bombings, arson, extortion and murder.
Born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1932, Thevis was raised by strict immigrant grandparents in the Greek Orthodox Church. When other boys played games, Mike worked for he was taught that toil, education and success were a natural order of life.
He began offering pornographic materials at his newsstands in the 1960s, expanding from publications such as Playboy and Oui to magazines and films featuring bondage, sadism and masochism, bestiality and child porn.
Career criminal Roger Dean Underhill met Thevis in the fall of 1967 and together they developed a profitable peep show machine that was manufactured and distributed by two Thevis-controlled corporations, Automatic Enterprises and Cinematics. Underwood and Thevis set fire to competitor's buildings and even murdered a fellow Atlanta pornographer in November of 1970. A couple of years later, they knocked off an employee who complained about his wages.
After getting paroled in January 1977, Underhill turned FBI informant in exchange for immunity for his crimes. Due in part to his assistance, prosecutors put together an airtight case of racketeering against Thevis. Before the information could be given to a federal grand jury, on April 28, 1978, Thevis escaped from jail and had Underhill murdered. Michael was arrested and confined to a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut where he confessed his crime to a cellmate. Thevis remains in jail to this day. His ex-wife, sons and former secretary Laverne Bowden are thought to control many of the pieces of his former empire.
Thevis's counterpart on the West Coast, Milton Luros, made his fortune pirating the line of literary pornography that Olympia Press first introduced into the U.S. in the late '60s. A former art director for several skin magazines, Luros owned a printing press in Chatsworth, California and a corporation known as Parliament News. He made a deal with prosecutors in 1974 to leave porn and eventually sold most of his companies to Reuben Sturman who copied his corporate spider web structure.
Sturman's problems with the federal government began in 1964 when FBI agents raided his Cleveland warehouse and seized 590 copies of a paperback called Sex Life of a Cop. Sturman responded to his indictment on federal obscenity charges by suing J. Edgar Hoover and eventually the charges against Reuben (and Hoover) were dismissed. For the next two decades, state, local, and federal officials constantly raided Sturman’s warehouses. Indicted on federal obscenity charges four more times during these years, Reuben avoided conviction on every count and never spent a day in prison. Like John Gotti, Reuben’s stature increased with each victory over the federal government.
Sturman created porn companies in England, France, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. He opened factories in Asia to make sex devices such as dildos and vibrators. As early as 1974, Sturman recognized that the future of porn lay in videotape. He put his films on video, opened retail video stores and began distributing hardcore videos in the United States and Western Europe. Sturman commanded 800 adult bookstores in 60 countries, 50 states and 40 foreign countries and a chain of peepshows under the name of Western Amusements. He manufactured his own peep machines (Automatic Vending), provided lie-detector tests for employee security (National Polygraph) and distributed sex toys under the trade name Doc Johnson (Marche Manufacturing).
How did this son of Russian immigrants build his empire? An FBI report lays out Sturman's methods: "…The strong-arm shakedowns of other dealers, distributors and suppliers throughout the United States, particularly on the West Coast. Sturman has accomplished almost a total takeover with the assistance of Robert DiBernardo (DiBi)."
Working with DiBi, Reuben earned millions of dollars through the production and sale of child pornography, including the magazine Lolly Tots. Sturman's Parliament News turned out loops featuring sex with children.
Sturman hated paying taxes. During 1974 his Cleveland warehouse filled with briefcases of cash from his retail stores and peep shows. Buying a Dutch passport in the name of Paul Bekker, he opened several Swiss bank accounts. He asked his eldest son David and partner Ralph Levine to sign the accounts. Zurich police caught Reuben who told the arresting office he only wanted to hide money in Switzerland to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Sentenced to a month in prison, he was barred from the country for three years. Unrepentant, Sturman sent David and a lawyer to another Swiss bank to close down an account. To avoid creating bank transfer records, they took the money in the form of 22 gold bars and $400,000 cash.
News of Sturman's escapades prompted IRS agent Richard Rosfelder to begin a long investigation of the Sovereign News owner, tracking Sturman's paper empire from Switzerland to the Cayman Islands to Cleveland, discovering more about creative corporate financing and state-of-the-art money-laundering techniques than about porn.
After Thevis and Sturman, the third porn mogul of the 1970s was Harry Virgil Mohney of Durand, Michigan. He imported large quantities of Euro-porn and controlled about 60 adult bookstores, a string of massage parlors, X-rated theaters and drive-in movies, go-go joints and a topless billiard hall. Sharing Reuben's passion for privacy, Mohney worked closely with the Colombo and DeCavalcante families who dominated, with the Gambinos, East Coast porn distribution.
Escaping conviction in MIPORN, Mohney, during the 1980s, owned the large porn production company Caribbean Films and the even more dominant mid-West distributor of porn films Entertainment World International.
Since before the days of Al Capone, Chicago has hosted murderously aggressive mob families. Midwestern hoodlums muscled their way into the burgeoning sex business in the 1970s through extortion, arson, bombings, and murder. The Gambino, Colombo, Bonanno-Galante and the DeCavalcante mob families ran the show with help from locals Michael Glitta, Anthony DeFalco, Joseph "Doves" Aiuppa, Gus Alex, James "Turk" Torello and the Anthony "Big Tuna" Accardo family.
The Mafia exacted 50% tribute from almost all the porno shops in Chicago, verified by frequent trips to the accounting books. Two partners who refused to submit received threats followed up by violence. Thugs tossed a pipe bomb through the window of one of their bookstores, and firebombed a porn distribution center. Chicago's smut merchants promptly fell into line.
"What the speakeasies were during Prohibition," writes Clifford L. Linedecker in his 1981 book Children in Chains, "porno is today. It is a product for which there is a demanding market, it is handled by cash sales, and to a large extent it is clandestine. Undertakings closed to public scrutiny allow crime to breed much more easily than those open to inspection and control. But the pornography trade attracts stubborn, determined men. Some of them are willing to fight and put their lives on the line, even when they are facing professional hoodlums and killers."
After losing thousands of dollars providing art films to their fellow Chicagoans, Paul Gonsky and company switched to porn and rapidly bought six theaters in Chicago and Indiana. They earned money and enemies in the mob, who firebombed three of Gonsky's theaters. A competing company operated by a cousin of Mafia boss Phil Alderiso opened a new X-rated theater a few blocks from one of the theaters operated by Gonsky. On the night the new movie house opened, a bomb blew away the entrance to Gonsky's theater.
Around noon on a crisp September day, 1977, Paul Gonsky was found lying on the ground in a parking lot near one of his theaters in Old Town, a three-block-long corridor of bars, arcades, head shops and strip joints. One or more of the seven bullets that had smashed into his body shattered Gonsky’s head.
The slaying was never solved, for among the problems investigators face with the violence and terrorism associated with commercial sex is the reluctance of victims and witnesses to talk. One of the first lessons learned by people who deal with the Mafia is to keep their mouths shut.
Suspects in the slaying include mob enforcer Frank Schweihs, pornographer Patrick "Patsy" Ricciardi (cousin of Mafia assassin Felix Alderisio) and Gonsky's partner Steven Hal Toushin. Steve had been taken to court by Gonsky and his other partner Jeffrey Begun for funneling money from their business into his own pockets. Begun understood the Gonsky assassination as a message and fled to California. Bereft of partners, Toushin put the aborted partnership into receivership and took over the Chicago porn operation by default.
Toushin refused to cooperate with police investigating the Gonsky slaying, fueling their suspicion of him. In 1978, Steve switched from heterosexual to homosexual films. Three years later he established himself in San Francisco, leasing the Screening Room. He renamed it Savages, brought in gay films and turned the basement into a carpeted orgy room. Movie houses in San Francisco and Chicago became the first of what Toushin hoped would be a nationwide gay chain.
Police suspect that Steve hired mob enforcer Frank Schweihs to murder Gonsky in 1976 and Patrick Ricciardi in 1985. In 1990, a federal judge sentenced Schweihs to 13 years in prison for using organized crime as a weapon to extort money from porn store owner William Wemette.
Wemmette began leading a double life as a pornographer and FBI informant in 1971. He first made payments to the mob in 1974 when he opened his Old Town porn shop. Street boss Joseph Lombardo, now in prison, set the figure of $250 a week. Other thugs who shook him down included Marshall Caifano, in prison, and Louis Eboli and Albert "Obbie" Frabotta, now dead.
Chicago produced little pornography but consumed tons. The largest distributor was Capitol News Agency owned by Reuben Sturman and operated by Neil Traynor. Capitol controlled 80% of the distribution of porn magazines and films in Chicago.
Porn Merchants: "The Chicago police concluded that "nearly all of the sexually explicit magazines and films distributed here" were produced by organized crime groups in California and New York and distributed by Reuben Sturman through his Sovereign News conglomerate. Pornographic materials move from Sovereign News in Cleveland, to Capitol News in Chicago (both Sturman run companies), to Weintraub, DeFalco, Gorman and other distributors, and eventually to the bookstores." (p. 82)
The idea of converting run down theatres in the Midwest into pornographic adult movie houses to launder cash from other illegal rackets was the brainchild of Chicago organized crime figure Patsy Riccardi. In 1977, he started the porn movie distributor Chicago Booking Service. Patsy was no patsy for he had close ties to the mob. A cousin of the late Felix Alderisio, a member of Chicago organized crime, Riccardi hung out with assassin Frank Schweihs and Las Vegas mobster Anthony Spilotro. In July 1985, Patsy was murdered in a mob-style hit.
Chicago organized crime member Marshall Caifano owned adult bookstores in Chicago and, as of 1977, had Reuben Sturman paying him protection money of $500 a week. Through Mike Glitta and Anthony Juliano, Caifano collected protection money from numerous businesses. Glitta served as the street boss for organized crime figure Joe DiVarco. Mike's ties to organized crime date to the 1950s. He ran B-girl strip joints in Chicago and later embraced X-rated films and tapes. In 1982, the Chicago Crime Commission said he supervised porn for the mob from the North Side to the Wisconsin state line. Glitta apparently reported to labor leader and North Side rackets boss Vincent Solano.
Anthony DeFalco and Paul Gorman ran A & A News in Chicago, which offered an extensive bestiality collection. Gorman told two FBI undercover agents that he could get sound projectors for Golde Coaste Specialties at a good price. Paul said that these projectors were often "too hot to touch" and that there might be a truck having an accident in the near future, at which time he'd have several hundred projectors available. DeFalco described the pornography industry as a close knit group of individuals who'd known each other for years, and that it was almost impossible for someone new to break into the business.
John Krasner, who built a smut empire based in Allentown, Pennsylvania that spread throughout the northeastern United States, proclaimed himself the "Prince of Pornography." In reality, he was a puppet of Reuben Sturman.
Before Krasner went bankrupt in 1966, and then began, with Al Morrow, to publish porn, his arrest record included robbery, narcotics and gambling. He financed his porn career with $160,000 in loans from Willie Weisberg, a major organized crime figure in Philadelphia whose career began with Prohibition. For years Weisberg was second-in-command of Philadelphia’s Rosen Mob, a highly organized criminal network.
Krasner had close business relations with Norman Arno and Teddy Gaswirth.
"Krasner’s business operations were incredibly sophisticated and complex. A single Krasner-owned bookstore would be concealed in a maze of corporations and individuals acting as "straw men." Fromer Krasner employees have revealed that a typical bookstore may have involved as many as eight corporations, thereby concealing actual ownership." (Porn Merchants, p.93)
Bouncing from one crisis to another during the 1970s, Krasner was convicted of conspiring to kill Al Morrow, a former business partner. While free on appeal, his wife was kidnapped and held for ransom. She finally escaped. Then several of his stores were bombed. The Krasners fled to Florida.
In 2/6/79, Krasner was gunned down in a Fort Lauderdale parking lot in what looked like a mob style hit, possibly ordered by his former partner Morrow. Krasner's son Phil took over his dad's operations, and was eventually busted for laundering money.
On 5/29/79, Morrow was shot but survived. He was later convicted for arson and fraud.
To combat the Mafia's porn racket, the FBI launched MIPORN. The acronym combined the location of FBI front operations "Miami" with the subject of the investigation "pornography."
MIPORN grew out of an investigation by the Dade County sheriff’s office in Florida in 1976. Two detectives from the office opened a retail pornography store and quickly found themselves enmeshed in a highly organized secret and nationwide industry. The two detectives turned for assistance to veteran FBI agent Bill Kelly, who'd covered the obscenity beat since 1962. Kelly persuaded his higher-ups to launch the federal investigation MIPORN.
Two FBI agents Bruce Ellavsky and Patrick Livingston moved to Miami in September 1977. Operating out of Miami warehouse, they posed as a pair of sleazy porno film buyers for a company they set up called Golde Coaste Specialties. The agents later set up G&C Sales, Ltd., in the Grand Cayman Islands to lend credibility to the operation.
Bruce Ellavsky, tall and handsome, used the undercover name Bruce Wakerly and Patrick Livingstone, short and balding became Pat Salamone. For thirty months (8/77 - 2/80), Bruce and Pat wore open-necked shirts, sharkskin suits, designer jeans, gold neck chains and diamond pinky rings. They drove around in rented Cadillacs, sometimes with a pair of beautiful women hanging on their arms, and boasted their drug dealing. To keep their credibility, they became "dupers," one who makes and sells unauthorized copies of films whose rights to distribution are held by others.
The agents infiltrated the porn industry and dealt with top crime figures who pirated mainstream movies as well as producing and distributing smut. The future owners of VCA Russell James Hampshire (born 7/25/46) and Walter Gernert (best known as one of the Dark Brothers, Walter Dark) shipped illegally duplicated videos of mainstream films across state lines for their TVX Distributors boss Phillip Charles Bernstene. Because such theft cost Hollywood a billion dollars a year, mainstream distributors contributed much of MIPORN's $300,000 budget which funded the FBI agents' trips to pornographers and mobsters in every major US city including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis and Providence.
When the wiseguys became suspicious and the lives of the FBI investigators appeared in danger, the undercover agents stopped paying their bills, which helped establish their credibility. Ellavsky and Livingston eventually gained the confidence of LA pornographer Rubin Gottesman who introduced the undercover agents to the industry. They gained these insights:
Robert "DiBi" DiBernado, Theodore "Teddy" Rothstein, and Andrew "Andre" D'Apice ran Star Distributors of New York City - the biggest porn dealer on the East Coast. Owned by the De Cavalcante crime family in the '70s, the multi-million dollar conglomerate controlled bookstores, movie theaters, and publishing houses in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio and Georgia. Star's biggest customer for decades was Reuben Sturman. The FBI, with assistance from other law enforcement agencies, documented deals between DiBernardo's Star Distributors and Reuben Sturman, Mike Thevis and Harry Mohney, among others. DiBi helped Sturman gain control of the porno trade on the West Coast by intimidating independent dealers and suppliers through threats and deeds of violence.
Mafiosi like Dibi, as a rule, don't run businesses for the mob generally contents itself with a piece of the action. According to Jeremiah B. McKenna, general counsel to the New York State Select Committee on Crime, the mob's main interest in the New York sex business expresses itself through real estate deals. The Mafia leases buildings for ten years from legitimate owners and then subleases them to the fly-by-night operators of massage parlors, adult book shops, peep shows, at $110 - $130 dollars a day cash - double what other businesses would pay. "The shops close up and move on, but that lease stays there until the next fly-by-nighter comes along. The property is held for the sex industry," McKenna said. "A guy can't come in and start selling shoes because the money is too great." (Newsday 10/6/86)
Star Distributors first came to the attention of law enforcement when it was a failing business which shipped product only for cash. But the company turned around after the arrival of mobster Robert DiBernado who had the "last word" in the company. He poured money into Star. DiBi had no experience in porn but he knew crime,