King of Porn Indicted on Obsenity....

[sarettah]

http://memphis.bizjournals.com/memphis/sto...14/daily29.html

Federal indictment includes Memphis porn shops

Several porn shops in Memphis, and their manager, are included in a 54-page federal indictment aimed at one of the world's biggest purveyors of pornography.

The 23-count federal indictment was returned Friday by a Dallas grand jury and issued late Monday by the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs and the IRS. The primary target is Denver's Edward Joseph Wedelstedt, who owns Goalie Entertainment Holdings, Inc., which owns bookstores, strip clubs, peep shows and distribution centers in 18 states.

Though the indictment names 53 different businesses, with names like La Mew, Inc., Hip Pocket and Puck Etc., it's not immediately clear which locations in Memphis are part of the indictment. A Department of Justice spokesman says Goalie uses a vast number of other names to obscure ownership. Memphis is considered a primary market for Goalie, he says, as well as a distribution hub.

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Wedelstedt, his wife Vivian Lee Schoug, Martinson, and three others are charged with racketeering, conspiracy in the handling of obscene materials, interstate transport of obscenity and conspiracy to commit tax evasion. The retail stores and video arcades deal primarily in cash; prosecutors are seeking more than $48 million, plus a Learjet and property in Colorado, Iowa, Texas and South Dakota.

Anti-porn forces are delighted by the indictment, says attorney Jan LaRue, general counsel for Concerned Women for America.

"We call him 'Mr. Big of Porn,'" she says. "He took over most of the porn empire of Reuben Sturman, who went to federal prison on the same kinds of charges. Sturman was the King of Porn, and ran the porn industry for organized crime. When you looked at the schematic it looked like IBM, with holdings all over the world."

The grand jury specifically named six videos as obscene. The nature of those videos is significant, says LaRue, who has fought pornography for years.

"The videos are the kind of hard core pornography anybody can buy right off the shelf; they don't involve to sort of bondage, rape and excretory subjects that DOJ has been focused on," she says. "They've gotten the bar down."

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[TheEnforcer]

The IRS I can surely understand and there could be Customs issues but I find it VERY odd that the department of Homeland Security is involved in this in any way.

And the fact that "vanilla" porn is the target validates what people have been saying for quite some time now... that the attack on this biz and the attempted narrowing of obscenity was only delayed by 9-11.

[JR]

Originally posted by TheEnforcer@Mar 18 2005, 07:03 AM
The IRS I can surely understand and there could be Customs issues but I find it VERY odd that the department of Homeland Security is involved in this in any way.

And the fact that "vanilla" porn is the target validates what people have been saying for quite some time now... that the attack on this biz and the attempted narrowing of obscenity was only delayed by 9-11.

Customs, Immigration etc = Department of Homeland Security

[Almighty Colin]

The worse thing about the "community standards" rule is that no one knows what the hell the community standard is. I don't think a nation of laws should have such an arbitrary definition. Tell me if I'm breaking the law or not so I know if I want to live here.

[TheEnforcer]

Originally posted by JR+Mar 18 2005, 10:18 AM-->