HOME

 

1/19/01

XXX says: Bob Johnson, from Brooklyn, is now a project manager for Vivid's internet operation. He's an interesting story. He's a Satan-worshipping former editorial director for High Society aka Crescent. He's a Hallmark Satanist. He would quake in his boots if he ever ran across an honest to God Satanist. But he had all the Satanic accoutremont at his office.

It made people wonder if there wasn't something to worshipping Satan because the guy did absolutely nothing. He never lifted a finger. He did no work. People who worked for him would actually write on the galleys that people would send round, and everybody would sign off on it, that "Bob Johnson is a scum bag and he will never read this." And he would just sign off on it. A very lazy guy.

He moved from the editorial director's position to the head of the internet (1998) when they first broke the internet off and made it a separate entity on a separate floor. He is credited within the company, by most employees, of thinking up the scheme of the free tour. Getting people's credit card numbers to supposedly verify age. Promise the surfers the tour was free and they would not get charged. Then charge them up the yazoo.

Bob Johnson, his real name, possibly implemented a similar scam at Vivid in April - June 1999.

He's an avowed worshipper of Satan, but only in the most superficial way. Almost as if someone said, 'I'm going to be a punkrocker.' And they get their hair cut, and they get the jacket, and the boots and they go to the concert. But next week they could be Britpop fans.

Every Halloween was his High Holiday [Rosh Hashannah, Yom Kippur]. He would decorate his office and give out free donuts.

His big coup was when he interviewed Satanist Anton LeVay. That was the one piece of work that anybody could attribute to him. He got on a plane because he wanted to meet his hero Anton LeVay. A two part interview that appeared in High Society and the numbers on those issues tanked. They put an inset of LeVay's face on the cover and they sold about half the normal amount of newsstand copies. And not only did those two issues tank, but they affected the numbers for the next half dozen issues that came out.

Anton LeVay wrote "The Satanic Bible" which to this day rakes in tons of money. He had an affair with Jayne Mansfield. He had the affair with her and supposedly put a curse on her that resulted in her deadly car accident. He litigated to have Satanism recognized as a religion that deserves the same constitutional protection as other religions. He's based in San Francisco and heads the American Satanic Church. He's the self proclaimed pope of Satanism in North America. He's well traveled along the fringes of Hollywood celebrity.

Bob Johnson was editorial director at Crescent from 1984 to 1998, when he moved to the internet.

I had Vivid sources swear to me, Luke, that Bob Johnson had nothing to do with Crescent's internet operation when in fact he was the evil mastermind behind the ripoff.

XXX says: "He's such a natural fit for devising the free tours scheme. Every time there was a questionable photograph of topless celebrity taken by paparrazi that may or may not have been ripped out of a European magazine, any time there was questionable material, do we have rights to the picture? His standard operating procedure was, 'Just run it.' He was a known photo thief.

"What's he good at? He's good at developing relationships with people like Bruce Chew and Carmine Bellucci, to be well liked..."

There were layoffs at Crescent a year ago. But six months prior, many people in the internet division were shifted around. They were sitting in offices not doing much of anything. Then after the FTC story broke, they got scared. And they started saying, 'We don't know what happened. We had people working for us that we let go... They must've gone too far.'

Bruce Chew's concept meetings would get interrupted and Bernstein, the CFO, would say, 'We're having problems with VISA. They found another one.' And Chew would respond, 'f--- 'em. We'll go to Guatemala. And if they find us down there, we'll move someplace else.' There's enough anecdotal information like that to put the smoking gun in Bruce Chew's hands. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was willfully avoiding VISA. American Express cut them loose early on.

Luke: So what is Bob Johnson good at? What's his talent? How does he run these things?

XXX says: "That's the joke. It's a real mystery to anyone who's worked with him on a daily basis. Maybe there really is something to worshipping Satan because look how far this guy's gotten with no talent, no skills and no work ethic."

Luke: "And no morals either."

XXX: "Maybe that is what he's good at. Cutting corners and screwing people over. Maybe that was recognized by his superiors there. He only had two - Carmine Bellucci and Bruce Chew (real name). Maybe his underhandedness was something they recognized."

Luke: "I hear that Bellucci and Chew are ruthless people."

XXX: "Extremely. Carmine fired somebody for breaking his chair. This guy was a little overweight and he broke Carmine's chair. That was it. He was fired the next day. Bruce Chew was famous for threatening people with strangulation in concept meetings. There were the terms, 'I really got Brucified,' or 'I really got chewed out this time.'"

Luke: "Bob Johnson's been at Vivid almost two years."

XXX: "When we heard about that, everybody was saying, my god. They probably just want to keep him for six months, find out everything he knows and then cut him loose. Vivid, that's top of the heap. It doesn't get any better than that."

Luke: "They were running that free tour scam in May of 1999."

XXX: "They're not still doing it, are they?"

Luke: "No."

XXX: "Even after the FTC story broke, Crescent was still doing it."

Bob Johnson writes Luke 1/22/01: "Dear Luke: Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and...well, you know the rest of the song. Seems like you discovered who I really am. Sincerely, THE DEVIL."