About a dozen porn production facilities in pornography hot spots such as Van
Nuys and Chatsworth have been taken by surprise in the last three months by a
barrage of federal agents at their doors.
The probes come on the heels of a May 2005 change in the regulations that
require producers to take two forms of government-issued identification from
performers and keep them on file indefinitely. Those records must be referred
to on the labels of all videos and DVDs sold. Violations are federal felonies
and can carry a prison sentence.
The Justice Department has prosecuted only one company to date under the new
law, said Bryan Sierra, a spokesman for the department. In September, the
founder of the "Girls Gone Wild" video empire, Joe Francis, pleaded guilty to
two felonies, and his production company pleaded guilty to 10 additional felony
counts.
Industry leaders doubt that the FBI will find many other violators. Jeffrey J.
Douglas, a criminal defense attorney and the chairman of the Free Speech
Coalition, an industry trade organization, estimates that there have been only
about a dozen occurrences of minors working in the industry in the last 25
years.
Public policy experts wonder whether the raids are the best use of taxpayer
money. "The FBI has limited what they investigate since 9/11, so moving into
this area does raise the question of resources," said Athan G. Theoharis, a
professor emeritus of history at Marquette University who has written
extensively on the FBI. "Is this at the expense of investigating the Enrons or
the WorldComs that have far more effect on the lives of American citizens?"
Theoharis said the crackdown on pornography hearkened back to the bureau's
early days, when J. Edgar Hoover boosted the FBI's reputation with a
high-profile campaign of prosecution against pornographers and prostitutes.
"It was sort of a PR move at the time to burnish their image and it reflected
American sensitivities," he said.
The current crackdown may not unearth the biggest violators, according to
industry executives. The worst offenders of child pornography, they say, are
not the well-established producers the FBI has targeted but the underground,
fly-by-night operations that by all accounts escape examination.
"Why would I jeopardize $10 million a year to shoot an underage girl?" said
Kevin Beechum, owner of K-Beech Inc., a longtime producer and distributor of
X-rated movies based in Chatsworth that was raided in December. "We're not
stupid."
Early one morning, computers in hand, the agents knocked on K-Beech's door,
demanding to see government-issued identification certifying that the
performers in 10 sexually explicit films dating to 1995 were not minors. The
company was found to be in compliance.
The FBI would not comment on the scope of its probe or the facilities it has
visited. But the agency takes issue with questions about the effectiveness of
the raids.
"If their feeling is there's nothing to worry about, then complying with the
inspections shouldn't be a problem," Sierra said.
He said to his knowledge the inspections had taken place only in California. He
would not elaborate on whether any inspections had led to criminal
investigations.
He said those instances had all been the result of fraud - fake identification
presented by performers with the intention of deceiving producers.
"If you were so incredibly crazy to film a minor, you surely would not get a
copy of their junior high school ID," Douglas said.
Although the public perception of porn producers often tends to be that of a
wild and unseemly underworld, many of the Valley's X-rated entities are tightly
run multimillion-dollar companies. Douglas said that complying with the rules
had buried X-rated producers in paperwork. He said one of his clients employed
a staff of eight who worked full time to maintain and organize federally
required records.
The surprise visits from federal agents began in earnest after an October
meeting between the FBI and the Free Speech Coalition, along with
representatives from six of the Valley's largest porn companies - including
mega-producers Vivid Entertainment, Larry Flynt Publications and Digital
Playground, along with three porn industry lawyers, according to a person who
was there who asked not to be named because the meeting was confidential.
The agents gave a slick presentation on what to expect, warning the producers
that they would be visiting facilities at random, with a minimum of five
agents, the person said. They were told that the inspectors would be equipped
with images assembled by a group of agents who were reviewing tapes pulled from
adult book and video stores, culling material in search of performers with a
suspiciously youthful glow.
Steven Hirsch, founder of Vivid Entertainment, the world's largest adult
entertainment company, said that large porn purveyors such as his had been
militant about record keeping and age verification for years, dating to the
scandal surrounding Traci Lords, a 15-year-old girl who lied about her age
during the 1980s, shot dozens of porn films and rose to become a celebrated
porn star before she turned 18.
After word of her real age leaked out, federal authorities cracked down on the
industry and prosecuted production companies and others involved in her career
- all of which denied any knowledge of her deception. Hirsch said the scandal
cost the industry millions and put the fear in producers throughout the Valley.
"The FBI is being decent and fair about it," Hirsch said. "But I don't think
it's an issue. There's plenty of girls of age who are willing to do this."
