More Reuben Sturman

Born in 1924, Reuben Sturman, the godfather of porn, grew up in Cleveland's East Side, the ambitious eldest son of immigrant Russian Jews who ran a grocery and several apartment buildings. The future leader of "Kosher Nostra" (the secular Jews who ran porn) served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, then attended Western Reserve University before marrying and starting his own business. Using his home as a garage, Reuben drove through Cleveland, visiting candy stores and selling comic books from the trunk of his old Dodge. His business grew by the late '50s into a wholesale magazine company with warehouses in eight cities.

At the suggestion of an employee, the company began to sell sex magazines. Once Sturman realized they produced 20 times the revenue of comic books, he wanted to stock every such publication printed. He eventually produced his own nudie periodicals and opened retail stores. By the end of the 1960s, Sturman ranked at the top of adult magazine distributors.

Mel Kamins told the 1/98 AVN: "My dad introduced me to Reuben. He was selling comic books, and I was in high school. It was 1955. We slowly went into the girlie magazine business and paperback books… He made me general manager of the agencies in 1969. They were at the time Sovereign News [Cleveland], Crown News [Philadelphia], New England News [Boston], Noble News [Baltimore], Majestic News [Pittsburgh], Imperial News [Buffalo]… Castle News [Milwaukee], Capital News… Sundial News [Denver]."

Veteran Los Angeles porn distributor Paul Wisner ran World News. He worked with Reuben in the comics business in 1950s. "Our circulation manager was Mel Friedman in New York. When Mel joined us at Parliament News in 1961, he traveled from New York to L.A., in his car, and he stopped at good comic book accounts - and Rebuen was one… Mel said, 'I'm going to work for a girlie magazine company.' Reuben said, 'What's a girlie magazine?' Once he found out, Reuben said, 'I'll give it a try.'

"The rest is history. He became the head honcho in the industry. He saw the future. He was brilliant… He expanded from one city to ten cities, he dominated east of the Mississippi, north of the Mason-Dixon line…

"I have decried some of the young people in the business today where one's word doesn't seem to mean anything. Reuben wouldn't do that. Once you made a deal, the deal was done. You delivered the merchandise, and he sent the check, and never more conversation." (AVN 1-98)

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 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.

By the mid '70s, Reuben owned over 200 adult bookstores supplied by regional distribution companies with regal names such as Royal News in Detroit, Noble News in Baltimore and the flagship Sovereign News in Cleveland. Though not as well known as Playboy's Hugh Hefner, Hustler's Larry Flynt and Penthouse's Bob Guccione, Sturman dominated porn more than Bill Gates dominates computers. One competitor complained that the Jewish wiseguy did not simply control the adult-entertainment industry; he was the industry. Flynt once estimated Reuben's net worth at $200 - $300 million.

Reuben replaced his wife Esther as company accountant with a full time professional. On lunch break, Sturman led an exercise class at the YMCA. As his marriage fell apart, he began affairs with several of the Cleveland housewives in his class. Esther begged him not to bring their children into the business but Reuben would not promise. (What Wild Ecstasy by John Heidenry)

Sturman, a big back of Cleveland sports teams, gave little charity, except to help out his own - pornographers and Russian Jewish immigrants.

"He was a local hero," says a porn source. "He was beloved in Cleveland because he gave so much."

To guard his privacy, Reuben used at least 20 different aliases, avoided the news media and frequently hid his face behind a mask during court appearances. "To his defenders in the sex industry," writes Eric Schlosser in the 2-10-97 US NEWS, "Sturman was a marketing genius and a champion of free speech, an entrepreneur whose toughness, intelligence, and boundless self-confidence were responsible for his successes. But to anti-porn activists and Justice Department officials, Sturman was the head of a vast criminal organization whose companies enjoyed an unfair competitive advantage: protection and support from the highest levels of the Cosa Nostra."

According to Jimmy Fratiano, Sturman was protected by the late Carlo Gambino. (The Last Mafioso by Ovid Demaris. 1981)

Called the "Pope of Porn," Lasse Braun sold millions of dollars worth of loops to American Reuben Sturman who began flying regularly to Denmark in 1969 to buy hardcore that included children, bondage and animals. Reuben also spent millions with the Theander brothers of Denmark. Born during the Second World War, Peter and Jens opened a magazine shop in downtown Copenhagen in 1966. Through good luck they avoided a police roundup, and eventually cornered the Danish hardcore market until legalization in 1969. The brothers then founded Candy Film which became the world's biggest producer of Super 8 film.

In 1971, Reuben Sturman visited Lasse Braun in Copenhagen and together they produced high quality peep-show machines - Super 8mm projectors closed in solid boxes - that Sturman distributed to virtually every state in the Union. By enclosing coin-operated projectors in a small booth with a screen and a door that could be locked, Braun, Sturman and the mob gave their customers the chance to masturbate while viewing porn in private.

Reuben placed peeps in all of his stores and supplied them free to other sex shop owners in return for half of the receipts. He started a company to manufacture booths and another company to service them.

Reuben 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.

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).

Los Angeles pornographer Milton Luros 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 took over the operations of Milton Luros in 1974.

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.

"The coronation of Reuben Sturman as King of Porn took place sometime in the mid-seventies," writes John Heidenry in his 1997 book What Wild Ecstasy. "During this period his fortune not only doubled but quadrupled, then grew tenfold."

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)."

In 1982, Ohio corporation Progressive Video sued Sturman, 35 companies and 40 other persons for more than $3 million, charging that Reuben through "a pattern of racketeering" tried to "... force plaintiff out of business and eliminate plaintiff as a competitive force in the worldwide market for adult videotapes." (Boston Glode 2/16/83)

The case was eventually settled out of court. "The owner of Progressive Video [Bob Dolan]," writes a source, "had worked for Sturman and when Sturman refused to go into video, he allowed Progressive to be formed and to copy all his movies onto tape. When video took off, Sturman wanted the video business back. Since he was Progressive's main customer and main supplier he was choking Progressive - thus the suit. A settlement was worked out after a short time."

Progressive is now out of business, and its broke owner, Bob Dolan, made the news in 1998 for living as a drug derelict in a dirty house that the neighbors complained about. His son Robert works as a film projectionist.

"Reuben loved to write," says a source. "He was a character. He'd write pages of allegories about the porn business. He was an interesting, colorful person.

"For so long, he was under indictment all the time that he couldn't leave the country. You always knew he was getting ready to leave the country when he started driving this old beatup Chevy and wearing old Levis and a straw hat. He'd put in blue contact lenses and grow stubble on his face. And he'd start talking with a southern twang."

Through the late '80s, Reuben divided his time between Cleveland (the warehouse), North Hollywood (production), Amsterdam (Euro-porn), and Switzerland (secret bank accounts).

David Sturman, meanwhile, married one of his father's ex-girlfriends, and developed a drug problem. Reuben fired him. David drifted to San Francisco and the two didn't communicate for several years. Then David met a devout Catholic Philipino woman who helped him put his life together. They married and had three children. Reuben gave his son an opportunity to redeem himself in the wholesale business - in comic books. For years afterward, David worked with veteran San Diego pornographer Joel Kaminksy, a relative of Sturman lieutenant Melvin Kaminsky. (What Wild Ecstasy by John Heidenry, p. 214)

In the early '80s, a friend of Reuben's from childhood introduced him to 21-year old singer Naomi Delgado. He took her to bed twenty minutes after their first meal together, got a facelift a few months later, then impregnated her. They married in 1986 and had a daughter, Erica.

In 1984, Reuben threw a lavish Christmas party for his employees at Swingo's restaurant in Cleveland's Statler Hotel. He delivered a pep talk on the potential of video and he vowed to fight censorship. When he finished, a screen dropped from the ceiling of the grand ballroom, upon which played a 15-minute mock porn flick starring Reuben. Everyone laughed until the final skit, when Reuben played a dirty old man approaching a group of school girls playing ring around the rosey. (WHAT WILD ECSTASY p.318)

When independent porn shops fell behind in their payments, Sturman moved in. His strategy was to "get them in over their head and take over their stores with the threat of cutting them off their supply," a law enforcement source told the 6-3-91 San Francisco Examiner.

"They're not really bad people - they were not into violence or stolen property, which you might expect if you think of Mafia people," a former independent said of the Sturman group. "They might skin you in business, and watch you starve. Once they know you're in a financial bind they will do that. But they never tried to muscle me." (Ibid.)

"Investigators say corporate officers in Sturman's business empire invariably prove to be either fictitious, deceased or front men with no real power. The businesses themselves are run by trusted friends from Cleveland who have been trained at Sturman's flagship Sovereign News Corp. Ohio law officers dubbed the place "the Fort Knox of porno" because of its bunker-like appearance and heavy security." (Examiner 6-3-91)

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."

Working with his friend Robert DiBernardo, Reuben earned millions of dollars through the production and sale of child pornography, including the magazine Lolly Tots. Sturman's Parliament News churned out loops featuring sex with children.

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 who is now serving a 100-year sentence on his conviction for loan-sharking, racketeering and murder.

Reuben began his move into the West in 1972, buying a chain of Nevada bookstores. Former Sovereign News accountant Ralph Levine ran the X-rated supermarket Talk of the Town, located a mile off the Las Vegas strip. According to FBI Agent Roger Young, it became the headquarters of Sturman's West Coast operations. He installed videotape-duplicating equipment which made tens of thousands of X-rated tapes that sold in Sturman stores in the West. The bookstore also developed a thriving mail order business, offering bestiality and "scat" films featuring sex acts with excrement.

In 1978, Reuben sent Ohioans Allan Berke and Ed Snyder to San Francisco to manage a new chain of sex shops. In 1985, the City's Vice Squad conducted a mass raid on the Mitchell Brothers Theatre in the Tenderloin, breaking up a show featuring Marilyn Chambers. In the wake of criticism of the raid, the Board of Supervisors abolished the requirement that sex-shop owners obtain permits. Police say these requirements were one of the few means they had of establishing who owned what.

Shortly after the deregulation, Sturman began acquiring most of the region's sex shops, buying eight stores in 1987 from Paul Wisner of Los Angeles, a veteran porn distributor. By 1991, Reuben owned 22 stores in the Bay Area.

Reuben used msucle to get things done. One of his hired thugs was Steve Assid, known for closing the door on people and saying, 'I'm here to make you an offer you can't refuse.' Assid would also threaten porners, such as Video Exclusive's executive Eric Gutterman who started distributorships that competed with Sturman's General Video of America.

Assid would walk in with machine guns and other high powered weaponry to persuade pornographers to fall in line.

Noel Bloom secretly gave Gutterman money to start a distributorship. Then one day Steve bounded in with a gun and backed Gutterman against a wall. Eric immediately laid the blame on Bloom.

"Assid was a very colorful character," says a source. "He always wore black and black boots."

Assid developed drug troubles. "He's probably some derelict somewhere in Cleveland," says a source. "I know that Reuben kept putting him in rehab centers. He'd get out and start doing drugs again."

In 1986, John Gotti had Reuben's buddy Robert DiBernardo murdered, and without his powerful friend, Sturman's empire crumbled.

An Internal Revenue Service agent who spent most of his adult life investigating Reuben Sturman finally brought the porn king behind bars. At age 27, Richard N. Rosfelder Jr. began investigating Sturman in 1975 because he suspected that Sturman used his elaborate corporate structure to avoid taxes. And he was right. Reuben skimmed millions of dollars from his peep machines each year and hid the money in offshore accounts. In his view, paying taxes was subsidizing the enemy.

After years of detective work, Rosfelder tracked down Sturman's Swiss bank accounts - and in an unprecedented move, the Swiss government gave the IRS access to those accounts. The Justice Department gave secret documents to the Swiss, showing that Sturman worked with organized crime families like the Gambinos of New York and the De Cavalcantes in New Jersey.

Shortly before his 1985 indictment for tax evasion, Reuben began funneling his money to Swiss bank accounts through sham corporations. His main Swiss helper, businessman Edouard Stockli, was arrested and jailed in March 1997.

The IRS charged Sturman with avoiding more than $3 million in personal income taxes between 1978-82. On his 1979 tax return, for instance, Reuben reported his taxable income as $1, 237.

Sturman delayed his tax trial until 1989 by challenging the legality of the Justice Department's actions, demanding to see the secret documents given to the Swiss and denying any connection with the Mafia.

Under this pressure, Sturman began selling off his empire, mainly by verbal contracts. With the help of an assistant, he spent weeks shredding documents.

An associate told me how Reuben paid many of his accounts in cash. "I saw him routinely pull out $30-$80,000 dollars in cash, in $20 and $50 bills. He once gave me $38,000 in cash. He kept a body guard around, a Mafia hit man, Jimmy Diz Long."

Long was a big black man in his sixties.

"He'd often carry a briefcase, filled with money, handcuffed to his wrist," says a source.

Then several Sturman loyalists cracked. In 1989, Sturman's longtime accountant Chuck Higgins told the FBI that Sturman still worked with the Gambinos.

After testifying before a federal grand jury, Higgins says he was summoned to Reuben's office in LA. He was met by one of the pornographer's bodyguards who said he had flown west with a "hit man" from New York and then "mentioned the name Gambino." Chuck says he was brought in to see Reuben who held a transcript of Higgins' supposedly secret testimony before the Grand Jury. The treasurer says he was forced to sign a document confessing to stealing from Sturman, then was fired and told to leave.

But the damage had already been done. Higgins tipped off law enforcement to hundreds of corporate documents that had not been shredded. The IRS found them in the basement of Sturman's housekeeper. And Sturman's longtime secretary testified that she had chosen the names of corporate officers from telephone books and novels like Lost Horizons.

Another Reuben accountant, Dan Nepper, tells stories of driving around cemetaries with Sturman and take names off the graves and use them for corporate officers.

"Higgins was stealing from Reuben," says a porn source. "Chuck had an account with Bank of America under the name Vidco Enterprises. He was doing Vidco Industry's accounting for Reuben. He was taking Vidco Industry's checks and depositing them. One day Higgins wasn't in. Somebody went in his desk and found the corporate seal and the stamp for deposit."

After dropping the dime on Sturman, Higgins vanished.

"He owned two ranches," says my source. "He collected thoroughbred horses. He just vanished. Because Reuben was going to get his money out of him. Sell Chuck's ranches and get his money. And Chuck's ex-wife didn't know what happened to him. Chuck sold everything and disappeared. I've heard that he surfaced in Arizona, his home state."

In Las Vegas, Reuben's long time friend Ralph Levine began cooperating with the prosecution, spilling corporate secrets. In Cleveland, Sturman was convicted of cheating on his taxes. In February 1990 he was sentenced to ten years in prison and fined $2.5 million. David received a four year sentence and served two. Ralph Levine received a three year sentence.

"The government was willing to drop the charges on David if Reuben would plead guilty," said a source close to David Sturman in 1998. "There was no legal strategy in their trial. Their best lawyer Paul Cambria was separated from them at the beginning. His client, Mel Kamins, only received probation.

"At this point Reuben was sliding into dementia caused by Altsheimers."

In Las Vegas in 1991, Sturman's jury squirmed in their seats while watching Reuben's tapes of human - animal sex, torture and the eating of excrement but wouldn't declare the videos obscene. The tapes came from the huge Talk of the Town bookstore and its Lacy Bodine catalog of films, described as "not for everybody." At $100 per film, the catalog offered the so-called "Animal Special" series. The videos showed young women having sex with horses, pigs, ponies, dogs, a cow and a chicken. One episode portrayed two women dressed as nuns having sex with each other and a mule. Another video showed a woman piercing a man's penis with needles.

Journalist Al Tobin covers federal court for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He wrote in its 6/21/92 edition about Reuben's 1991 Las Vegas obscenity trial:

The trial had been more than just another run-of-the-mill criminal prosecution. The government had cartons of evidence proving that the 67-year-old former Cleveland native had ruled a multi-million dollar empire of adult bookstores, peep shows, movie houses and shops dealing in anatomically-correct rubber goods and other sexual paraphernalia.

Sturman was charged with running a racketeer-influenced and corrupt organization, with conspiracy, and with aiding and abetting the interstate transportation of obscene material. But for all the stilted legal jargon, the case really boiled down to eight interstate shipments of videotapes that had been ordered by undercover officers around the country.

They were films with titles like "You Said A Mouthful," "Golden Showers," "Animal Tapes 1-6," "Female Domination," "The Nurse Will See You Now," "Dr. Bizzaro," "Between The Cheeks," and "Brothers Should Do It."

They were movies of humans eating excrement, women having sex with horses, pigs, chickens and other animals, and acts of sadomasochism from the bowels of human imagination.

Truly disgusting and revolting by the standards of most people, this wasn't film noir, or Penthouse Goes To The Movies. On the whole it was celluloid devoid of eroticism, without the slightest entertainment value.

There were scenes of a woman piercing a man's penis with needles, a ball covered with pins being viciously rolled over a set of genitals, footage of pubic hair being burned off between a man's anus and scrotum. All of this of course in the name of adult entertainment and the First Amendment.

Sturman and co-defendant Stanley Loeb, the owner of an adult video distributorship in Las Vegas, had lost a major battle before the case ever got to trial when U.S. District Judge Lloyd George ruled the government had every right to play the films for the jury. The defense worried that once they saw the films the jurors would crucify the two men. Both the defense and the prosecution went into the trial certain the jury would find most of the films abhorrent and obscene.

To prove its case, the prosecution had to convince the jury that: one, the films were obscene when applying the community standard; and two, that Sturman and Loeb had knowledge of and were linked to the interstate shipments of the specialty films.

The Justice Department had a lot at stake in the Sturman trial.

Three previous obscenity prosecutions against him had ended in failure. There was a sense on both sides that the Las Vegas case was of historic significance.

To say, however, that the government went into court batting .000 against Sturman would be a gross mischaracterization. In 1989 the Cleveland Strike Force and IRS had nailed the Cleveland wonder on tax evasion charges. Jurors concurred that Sturman had laundered millions of dollars in profits from an empire built on smut. Although he had been sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $2.46 million, he had remained free while he appealed the conviction.

While the tax evasion prosecution had been an overwhelming victory, it had not been enough. The Vegas obscenity case was very important to the smut busters. The government didn't just want Sturman behind bars, it wanted a total repudiation of all he stood for and the industry that had made him a wealthy man.

Vegas had been an important part of the smut king's operation. The world famous Talk of The Town bookstore and movie hall, northeast of the Strip, at one time had been a key U.S. distribution center for his business network. Many of the movies and specialty items had come from the shelves of the Talk of the Town. So as Sturman stood in the hall outside the courtroom, the importance of the moment was not lost upon him.

As I approached him he tried to keep me at arm's length with a baleful glare that came from rock-hard eyes. Like many people, I assumed he didn't like reporters, but I was going to try to elicit an interview from him nonetheless. I hesitated, then told myself he looked like someone's grandfather, just another bespectacled senior citizen.

He politely took my business card and declined comment. His voice had a comical quality to it, a Groucho-like resonance. Far from antagonistic, he was even gracious.

The trial was commencing on the second day of the celebration of the Jewish New Year, and Sturman made note of the occasion.

"What's a nice Jewish boy like you doing here on Rosh Hashana?" he asked.

Stunned somewhat by the unsolicited nature of the remark, I fumbled for a response and told him I had to be there because he was there, that the case was of public interest.

Having witnessed his ability to dish it out, I later decided to test the waters further and see if he could take it.

"Well Mr. Sturman," I inquired. "Tell me. How did a nice Jewish man like yourself end up in the P-O-R-N-O business?"

His response was instantaneous, and I realized here was a man who could roll with the punches whether they came from the government or a reporter trying to bust chops.

"Kid, let me tell you something," he said nicely. "Everything that happens to you in life is an accident. I started out in Cleveland. One thing leads to another. It was all an accident."

The fact of the matter is he had grown up in Cleveland as the eldest son of Russian Jewish immigrants. Upon graduation in 1948 from Western Reserve University Sturman had gone into business wholesaling cigarettes and candy with a friend from the basement of his home on the southeast side of Cleveland.

One thing did lead to another. Business went well and they soon opened a warehouse. It wasn't long before Sturman struck out on his own buying used comic books and selling them for profit. Along the way he started dealing in "girlie" magazines and when the sexual revolution took off in the sixties his involvement in the porn trade rocketed like an Apollo moon shot.

With the help of lawyers he created a maze of corporations. To insulate himself as much as possible from police and federal investigators, he used phony names and foreign bank accounts.

Yet being Mr. Big was never quite enough for him. Whenever authorities raided one of his operations or arrested him, Sturman fought no matter how big or small the case, no matter how great the cost. He hired high-priced lawyers and became a brazen champion of the First Amendment. At times he even went on the offensive. In Detroit he sued police because he thought a raid had gone too far. He even sued the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover, alleging the bureau's agents were trying to intimidate retailers who bought sexually explicit materials from him.

While shunning publicity, he threw lavish parties, collected original fine art and wore fine clothes _ all of which served only to attract attention. His lifestyle and impudence made him an irresistible and gargantuan target for government investigators. Had his approach been more low-key, no doubt there still would have been arrests and investigations. But for all his business acumen and revolutionizing of the porno industry, Sturman failed to realize he was unleashing a federal firefight that would leave him forever scarred.

Whether all this had finally started to dawn on America's clown prince of porn as he sat in court, who's to say? But he certainly seemed like a fallen king, resigned to defeat and trying to disguise his fear with humor. Unlike his previous court appearances, he chose to engage some of the reporters who gathered every day to follow his story. Noticeably absent were the phony nose and glasses _ the Groucho get-up _ or the surgeon's mask and cowboy hat that he had worn on various trips to the courthouse to conceal his face from obtrusive cameramen. He considered their hounding of him _ but not the sexually-oriented materials that he had sold for decades _ obscene.

The trial didn't just pit Sturman and co-defendant Loeb against the FBI. On one side of the courtroom sat Bruce Taylor and J. Kenneth Lowrie, the two prosecutors the Justice Department had sent from Washington, D.C., to deliver the knockout punch. At the other table sat Sturman's attorney, J. Michael Murray, of Cleveland, and Loeb's lawyer, the avuncular Stanley Stone.

And it became apparent early on that the government would have its hands full dealing with the skillful grandiloquence that was emanating from the defense side of the room.

The case grew bizarre when Judge George's courtroom was turned into a Triple X-rated movie house and the boredom was over. Some of the jurors stared bug-eyed at the television monitor set up on the prosecution table as if they couldn't believe they were sitting there watching dirty movies.

Those of us in the press gallery who wanted to see the films had to move to Sturman's side of the room to get a view of the screen. As I did so I drew an immediate response from the defendant.

"You dirty dog," he chided me. "Touche," I thought. You got me, Reuben. Whatever you do, don't tell my mother my glasses are turning thick as Coke bottles. If I sit here much longer I'll go blind.

Filled with levity, Sturman laughed. Perhaps it was laughter born of fear, but it was laughter just the same. During one close-up, Sturman turned to Michael Murray and with great jocularity asked if that was a man or woman on the screen. Later he would rebuke me for reporting that he was laughing as the prosecution played movies of men and woman having sex with animals.

"It was a figment of your imagination," he chided, threatening to stop talking to me. But the silence lasted only a few hours before giving way to the occasional off-color joke and verbal jousting that neither of us could resist. In a way we needed each other. Without reporters to put their names in the paper, guys like Reuben Sturman go through life missing the public notoriety they crave but claim to detest. And without Damon Runyon characters like Reuben Sturman, the world would be a pretty dull place for reporters to ply their craft.

As the tapes rolled Sturman's mirth gave way to cold anxiety, for the jurors looked anything but amused. At one point Sturman stood up to look at their faces, trying to gauge their reactions. Stanley Loeb, Sturman's alleged partner in crime, paced the floor nervously until his attorney barked a voice command to sit down.

The worry hung from Sturman and Loeb like wrinkles on a cheap suit.

"I retired from this business six years ago," Sturman told me during a break in the proceedings, his voice dripping with concern. He had the sound of a man who felt he was about to go under. "All these businesses have been sold out to management companies. I'm 67 years old. I'm on this end of life. I'm sliding downhill quickly and these people aren't making it any slower for me."

The man who had once roared louder than Muhammad Ali before a championship fight was sounding like a frightened mouse. His was a porno empire rendered impotent by years of investigation and millions in legal fees.

***

Eventually, after the jury hung on whether nine tapes Reuben's company shipped to undercover federal agents were obscene, the U.S. Justice Department reached a plea bargain with Reuben that reduced his prison sentence to four years and assured that he would not be retried. Sturman also paid a one million-dollar fine. He pled guilty in April 1992 to one count of racketeering and seven counts of shipping obscenity, including child porn and bestiality, across state lines.

With the coordination of Reuben and his lawyer, Naomi Delgado attempted to bribe a juror on the case with sex and money. It backfired. The juror reported her attempt, and she was later sentenced to two years in jail. Reuben divorced her in 1992, hoping to keep her out of trouble.

From 1992-97, Naomi remained Sturman's only friend, writes John Heidenry. His son David began actively cooperating with law enforcement after 1990, and Reuben hated him for it. Of all Sturman's children from his first marriage, only his adopted daughter Peggy stayed in touch. His porn peers either testified against him behind his back or ignored him. (What Wild Ecstasy)

David Sturman says: "Reuben was mad at me because I was the one that went to the Feds when they threatened to charge me with an additional felony for bribing the judge in the original case which Reuben did end up paying over $500k to a fake intermediary which turns out to be that this guy out and out extorted him. This is all general knowledge."

In 1992, Reuben finally went to Boron Federal Prison in California. Sturman's lawyer Sanford I. Atkin told him that he'd be able to avoid a long jail term by bribing his judge David D. Dowd. Atkin offered the $500,000 bribe through Sturman's bodyguard, money collector and hit man, James "Diz" Long.

Atkin knew that Sturman planned to flee the country but persuaded him to stay by promising he could arrange to reduce his ten-year sentence to one year. But the bribe didn't work.

"Selinda, David's Philipino wife, was the one who squealed on Reuben to get David out of prison early," says a source. "And Reuben sent me the whole transcript of her testimony to the FBI. Reuben wouldn't talk to David for years."

While serving his sentence at Boron Federal Prison in California, Sturman became angry that operators of twelve of his bookstores failed to kickback to him as verbally agreed. When the owner of Phoenix's sex shop Pleasure World died in 1990, his widow took over. She noticed that $1000 monthly payments had been made to a man named Reuben Sturman but she could find no bill or contract to justify them. So she stopped paying. Reuben called her to explain the arrangement but she ignored him. Around Thanksgiving, 1991, Sturman arranged for thugs to smash the store's video machines. The payments resumed.

Owners of several Chicago sex shops, Paula Lawrence and Roy May supposedly owed Reuben about $100,000 a month. Sturman sold the stores to them in a verbal agreement for $35,000 a month and two percent of the gross sales. With Reuben incarcerated, the operators made payments to the IRS instead of Reuben.

Getting help from Herbert Feinberg aka Mickey Fine, Sturman hired outlaw bikers from California to smash eight porn shops in Chicago and four in Milwaukee as payment overdue warnings.

Taking plastic explosives onboard, the bikers flew to Chicago. They drove in two different vehicles to blow up a selected store. Stray electronic signals from a traffic light accidentally ignited a bomb in one car, killing one thug and injuring another. The survivor became a witness for the government against Sturman who realized that he was going to be convicted of the bombing conspiracy.

With the aid of a car, Reuben escaped on the night of December 7, 1992 from his low security prison, disappearing into the Mojave Desert. Federal officials assumed that he'd fled the country and would never be seen again. But eight weeks later he was found in an apartment near Disneyland.

"Reuben's best friend in Cleveland, while dying of cancer, asked Reuben to take care of his kid," says a source. "So Reuben brought him to Los Angeles, and raised him, and gave him jobs in the business. And the boy, he had a car waiting for Reuben. So when Reuben did his late afternoon jog, he kept running to the highway. It was all planned.

"And it was that kid, Shawn, and his sister Cynthia, who squealed to authorites, because they put the bamboo shoots under their nails. So now they're in the witness protection program."

Within a month of his capture, Sturman was indicted and accused of hiring men to damage and destroy peep-show booths at bookstores in Cleveland, Chicago and Phoenix. The jury acquitted him of the bombings, but convicted him of conspiring to commit extortion through the use of violence. He received a 20-year sentence.

After deliberating less than two hours, a federal jury in 1994 convicted Herbert "Mickey" Feinberg of attempted murder through his hiring of four men to bomb the sex shops.

Two weeks after Reuben's capture, Naomi Delgado was arrested at her home in Sherman Oaks and charged with tampering with two grand jury witnesses who helped Sturman escape. The two witnesses then joined the witness protection program. Delgado, born around 1960, cooperated with authorities in exchange for a reduced sentence. She testified against Reuben in the Chicago extortion case.

"The escape from prison was his first monumental mistake," said Paul Cambria, a Buffalo lawyer who frequently represents pornographers. "There's no way to recover from something like that. I'm sure he's sitting there thinking, 'I helped a lot of people and now they're abandoning me.' There are a lot of people in business because of a helping hand from Reuben. I'm sure he feels abandoned and alone."

In 1993, Reuben told the Cleveland Plains Dealer that "75% of the people in the business started with me… They won't take my phone calls. They won't send a letter - 'How you doing? Hope you're all right.' I've only got my wife and child.

"It's amazing how everybody turned. Everybody. Unbelievable. I want to get out of here for only one reason: Because I want to spit in the face of so many people, just spit in their face... All I want to do is tell each one what I think of them. Just one time and then I'll say to them something like, `I hope you rot in hell,' and leave.'"

Because Sturman owed $29 million in back taxes, the IRS seized all his available assets. "This was the biggest case the IRS criminal division had ever seen," says Rossfelder. "It's effect on the rest of the porn industry was monumental. There were a lot of people in this industry reporting nickels and dimes who now reports hundreds of thousands of dollars."

In late 1998, Joe Marshall remembers:

The Reuben case was fun. Seems he owns most of the adult book stores here in San Diego County and everywhere else. Well, a guy comes into our office one day, named Ivan Soloman, and says he was fired for being a "whistle blower." Soloman graduated from the University of Chicago, as I recall, with a degree in business and went to work in the banking industry. One day he just says "screw it" and heads to California and nicer weather.

Now, he needs a job and turns to the classifieds only to find that a bookstore chain was looking for a manager. Soloman gets the job, in one of Reuben's bookstores, "Midnight Books", and looks at it as just a regular job. So it's an adult book store and video arcade, makes no difference to Ivan, it's a business. He digs in and increases the stores sales and profits in a big way. Then he discovers a potential problem for the business. All of Reuben's stores are charging sales tax on dated books and magizines, a no no in California. So being a thoughtful employee he calls the Franchise Tax
Board and justs asks the questions. Then he calls one of Reuben's boys and tells him. They turn out the lights on Ivan and we sue.

Well, it turns out that Ivan had been keeping copies of all the business records for three of the stores to study at home. Bang. The place is breaking the law all over the place. Someone comes in and says, "Give me ten bucks in tokens (for the video machines)." The ten spot goes into the bottom of the cash drawer and the tokens are recycled all day, everyday and no profit is reported. Now Ivan starts to ask questions and figures out that something like 50 Grand a week is going unreported from the arcades alone. He's got all the records!!! ...and they fired him. Bad move.

So, he decides to sue Sturman for wrongful termination. The law office takes the case and man did things heat up. Somehow the Feds got wind of it and called the lead attorney on the case who by then had all the records. Naturally they want to see all the papers so what do you tell the FBI and the IRS? Well, Reuben gets the word and things start to get very interesting for Ivan. Someone leaves a shotgun shell in his mailbox. Then someone fires a couple of shots through his front door. Eventually, his house is broken into and trashed as if someone were looking for something.

The attorney, Eric Dierker, has the records locked into a safe deposit box, and starts looking over his shoulder. Well, I begin to interview Ivan in great detail about his job and it gets really interesting. Seems that Reuben was bootlegging his own video tapes. The underbelly of the industry. They had a shop, so Ivan reported, in Northern San Diego County, with rows and rows of video recorders churning out thousands of copies of major releases for sale in plain boxes with no labels. I still have three or four of them now that Ivan gave me. Anyway, we file the law suit and send our investigator to serve it on the local boys.

To say he wasn't welcomed with open arms is an understatement if there ever was one. Mark, the investigator, pulls up at the video bootleg location and sees about four or five guys standing by several new Mercedes', Caddy's and Lincoln's, and gets out to serve the suit. He asks one of the guys if he's so and so and some really big dude steps up and says, "Yeah, who wants to know?". Mark says he considered quitting his job on the spot, but handed the guy the Summons and Complaint. So then, the big guy shoves him and tells him to get lost or get hurt. Now the State of California frowns on people who serve process being asaulted, in fact it's a felony, but Mark just jumped into his car and drove into the sunset. Next up, the FBI phones and asks if they can come by and look at the business records. As it turned out, the lead- attorney had to be somewhere else that evening, so I got to personally entertain two FBI Special Agents and two IRS Revenue Agents, while also making sure our client didn't say too much. We had a six hour discussion about Mr. Sturman's role in the porn business, and what a story. Too much for here, but perhaps sometime I can tell you more.

Well, the evening went well, the government sprang for pizza and cokes and a good time was had by all. Eventually the case went to trial and the jury found that they didn't think that Mr. Soloman had been terminated wrongfully in violation of public policy. Reuben won!!!

A few weeks later I had a phone call from IRS Revenue Agent Dan (we'll just forget his last name for now) and he tells me to be sure and watch the evening network news on ABC. Seems that the IRS raided Ruben's digs in Cleveland and confiscated everything, and I mean everything. Agent Dan told me that Ruben almost cried when they were removing his hot tub and actually offered to pay a million bucks in cash, on the spot, as part of his tax liability. Agent Dan laughed and said to me, "Joe, I told him, 'Reuben, we don't want a million bucks. We want it all.'" Friends they got it all too.

Ivan has dropped out of sight, the attorney was suspended for five years, by the state bar a couple of years later, for a number of ethical violations regarding clients but mainly for drinking too much and inhaling too much "nose candy." Agent Dan, of the IRS, has retired and Special Agent Roger of the FBI continues to fight crime out of the Las Vegas field office.

***

In September 1995, a mysterious fire virtually leveled the Doc Johnson plant in North Hollywood. Then someone blew up a bank in the Cayman Islands. Law enforcement speculates that the two events amounted to a last battle for control of Sturman's remaining empire. According to insiders, three major factions fought for control of the porn industry, and the retaliatory bombing targeted a place where a significant amount of one of the faction's assets resided. The bombing concluded the struggle, and the three groups - one of them headquartered in Paris - agreed to divide the international porn market into equal shares. (What Wild Ecstasy, p. 371)

In 1997, journalist Harris Gaffin visited Reuben Sturman in prison. Reuben told him that if he could get out of jail for one day, he'd love to go around with a baseball bat and bash "all their [porn peers] fucking heads in." Harris did not include the quote in his book.

In late 1997, Sturman died of a stroke brought on by Altsheimers. His family was with him in his final incoherent days. They blame the prison for inadequate health care, saying that Reuben's kidney failure went undiagnosed.

Reuben's successors at General Video of America, which is headquartered in Cleveland, are convicted tax evader Melvin Kaminsky aka Mel Kamins and Harvey Horowitz. Another convict, Denver thug Eddie J. Wedelstedt, received most of Reuben's retail store empire (about 200 stores) in the late '80s and early '90s.

Though they abandoned him in his hour of need, Reuben's "friends" happily eulogized him in the 1-98 issue of AVN. Men quoted included Ron Braverman of Doc Johnson, Chris Mann of Video Team, Jim Holliday, Mel Kamins of GVA, Paul Wisner of World News, Howie Klein of H.K. Video, Russ Hampshire of VCA, Stan Loeb of Paladin, Fred Hirsch of Executive Video, Ed Powers of 4-Play Video and Eddie Wedelstedt of Goalie Entertainment.

Jim Holliday says Sturman "had a hand in inventing the formula for almost everything. Even the notion of movies, the concepts everybody wonders about. Like 'no guy gets naked before the girl gets naked.' Or 'I want a cum shot in the first six minutes and every six minutes after that.' And 'I don't give a shit about the content of the movie, just give me a great title.'" (AVN 1-98)

Naomi Delgado and Reuben's daughter Erica live in Encino, CA.

6/7/00

Mike Blatt and the Traci Lords Controversy

Luke invites comment from Mike Blatt and others on the following, particularly as I have not talked to everybody involved.

Lynne writes:

I left Parliament News in 1979 for Boston to attend the University of Massachusetts, College of Public & Community Service. I had the crazy notion that I could provide more service to those afflicted with various sexual variances through an education and degree than I could as production coordinator for a pornographic publishing house. Silly me. Plus I had an ongoing pen pal relationship with the Boston music scene, L.A. having degenerated into "big hair bands" and punk bands who had been "big hair bands" the previous year but who had since discovered hard drugs.

After scandalizing the town for four years with my propensity to wear as little clothing as possible whenever the weather allowed, and keeping my booty in porn through exotic dancing and anti-PC posters for the school Rock & Roll Club, I made a big mistake. The next five years were the antithesis of erotic and will be gently set aside for now. They deserve their own book. I returned to Parliament News in January, 1988.

There are some people in this industry I respect, and one of those people told me this story. For the sake of narrative, we will call my friend Deepthroa -- no, I think Chip Stevens will suffice. Every morning we would have a cup of coffee together and avoid work as long as possible before Paul Wisner came in.

I'd returned to a porn mag business in trouble. We were at the beginning of the long pricing slide that had occurred when Ruben Sturman decided to cash out of porn, with or without informing his partners.

I'd missed the video revolution and, between Chip and my late husband, Bruce, I took history lessons. Adult films first penetrated the mainstream marketplace when they made up the majority of available titles for the new VCR's. The films (and they were films) were sufficiently profitable to have budgets, production value, and plots. There was plenty of money in both new video technology and the old cash cow dirty bookstores.

Then Traci Lords made the news. The adult film industry, which had grown into the adult video industry, had been caught with its pants down literally. Even though no one was held at fault for the deception, the porn industry prepared to be scrutinized with a magnifying glass by the government and its dancing partner, the religious right.

Reuben [Sturman] knew it was time to get out. Suddenly, hundreds and then thousands of masters were dumped cheap for cash to Israeli Jews. The market was flooded with cheap, poorly duplicated vintage movies, many in new packages to simulate contemporary release. Instead of distributing through the existing bookstore system, or even the new network of mom & pop video stores, these new players solicited new markets. Adult video was quickly perceived as a high profit item in every liquor store which could get away with selling it. Legitimate manufacturers had to stand by and watch prices plummet -- Ruben was bigger than everyone else combined. And he wanted out.

Meanwhile, over at Parliament News, matters were equally dire in the magazine market. Magazines are hard inventory, unlike videotape rights, and an investment in paper and printing is made which takes months, if not years, to recover. Paul Wisner had never seen the need to make an investment in the actual contents of the magazines -- their sale was unimportant, anyway -- they served as a First Amendment defense for the quarter machines in the back room. As long as the presses and publishers operated quietly, they could make a modest profit with very little expense or effort. (It turned out that the latter turned out to be very unfortunate in the long run, but who could forsee porn outliving the The Reagan Era?)

Hardcore magazines had cover prices which meant nothing except to impart a false sense of value to the product. They were meant to be discounted, and although their actual print cost was a fraction of the cover price, there was plenty of room for a dandy profit for both publisher and retailer IF "front line" profit were maintained.

For example, a magazine costing $0.85 to print, with a $20.00 cover price, was sold "2 for $30.00." If the magazine cost the store $5.00...well you get the idea.

Individual hardcore magazines were bought and sold like videotapes, by title. A press run lasted until every last piece was sold.

Between Traci Lords and Mike Blatt, porn magazines died a painful, ugly, reprinted ad nauseum death.

Mike took a look at the inventory peacefully taking up space in the warehouse, and found customers who would take it on the cheap. He handed in the cash. The prices were never questioned. The prices were cost plus his commission. No one was watching.

A magazine which cost $0.85 and sold for $1.50 was nowhere near as profitable to the publisher as one which sold $5.00, but the retail stores were thrilled at the deals...

By the time Paul Wisner found that his physical assets had been whored out the back door, the pricing structure of porn magazines had been destroyed forever.

Paul had always been concerned that video would create a visibility problem for porn, that porn on every street corner would flood the market until the social forces which object to it would attack. As the religious right grew in strength and the Reagan Administration colluded with Charles Keating in the rape of the nation's savings & loan institutions, the Justice Department attacked. Sturman had been greedy -- his instincts had been correct, but he couldn't let go. He didn't get out in time.

Paul was fortunate in many ways. The magazines were never targeted for prosecution by Operation Wormwood. Wisner's only interest in video was Gourmet Video, which fought back against federal prosecution and won. But, on their own, at the "remaindered" price structure, they couldn't profit. And with no creative investment, they had limited appeal to a generation which had come of age on video porn.

When Paul passed away last fall, the presses made only reprints for multi-packs for dirty bookstores and newsstands.

Porn Insider replies: Ms. Lopatain has a distorted take on a slice of porn history where she would probably pass a polygraph test upon questioning. Following the "three sides to every story" theorem, her remembrance, although true to her mind, is very wrong when it comes to the knowledge to the whys and where fores of Parliament News' business plans and any reasonings for their pricing requirements. Mike Blatt's name has been mentioned as the person responsible for some kind of low-ball pricing scheme when in fact, it was Paul Wisner who completely ran and knew everything going on within the realm of his publishing business. To my mind, success is measured by how big ones bank account is at the end of the day, Paul's was significant. Can you buy a buggy whip anywhere today? The market changes with the times and the times dictated a change. The market dictated the need for price reductions because of competition from the mass market magazines, like Hustler, and additional competition from the growing video market.

Which brings us to the scapegoat Lynn uses to blame the fall of the adult video business, Reuben Sturman. To cover the points she illustrates, Mr. Sturman never ever sold his masters inexpensively to any Israelis. As any student of porno history knows, Mr. Sturman started and ran a video company called Vidco back in the 70's and early 80's. When he decided to finally retire after many debilitating federal prosecutions, he sold Vidco to the owners of Caballero and may I mention, at a great profit. A few years later, Caballero was sold to an Israeli who did cut all of those features down to sixty minutes and sold them then for the unheard of price, $2.00. BTW, the price for those same movies now is $1.20. This unheard of price back then was only precipitated by what was being done regularly at Leisure Time, aka, Video Exclusives.

Her take on the new distribution channels established by the need to sell more porno is quite correct but is was really started by the companies that sold hardcore magazine packs to the liquor stores and originally, it was a company called Excaliber that marketed Hollywood Half Hours to the liquor stores back before 1982, much before the Israelis had their hand in it.

Granted, Parliament only printed old packages depicting couples from the 80's which did add to the fall of the $20, hardcore magazine. Once Mr. Wisner died, so did all of his ties to his customers. And Parliament went with him closing their doors shortly after his death. To blame that business is conducted because of greed is both short sighted and un-American. If that were the case, everyone from Bill Gates to Al Goldstein would fall under that category. It is easy to blame others for your own shortcomings.

Lynne: To Porn Insider: Thanks for filling in the pieces. The one thing I know is this: Paul was extremely unhappy with Mike Blatt for whoring the inventory behind his back. Paul didn't know. Or all of it, fast enough. And Bruce drove me by a building where he said all sorts of masters of dubious ownership with Rueben's covert approval were being duplicated by Israeli Jews, people who are different than Americans of any religion. But I encourage your input and Luke's efforts to document any truth. I only speculate and try to draw the cobweb a little tighter until it makes motivational sense. And I have a box of used buggy whips to sell you, real cheap.

2/27/01

Mort writes: My son, who is quite the researcher, found some info on Reuben Sturman that you had written. I worked for Cinematic Vending in Toronto under Ray Sloan during the late 60's. I was actually a signatory on the company cheques ( I paid for that years later), and had a bit of inside information the FBI and IRS were interested in (no more on that right now).

My Canadian overseer was Gordon MacAuslane, who took the rap for some of Reuben's activities, and later disappeared. I wonder if you came across any reference to him, living or dead (rumours have it he was killed in a major hash oil smuggling operation)...

Gordon was the Canadian owner of Bookazine Enterprises and North American News (a distributor) in Toronto. I worked for his bookstores initially, and we brought the original peeps using the Technicolor cassette loops into Toronto in 1968. Interesting guy, his father was a Canadian Communist hero of some stature, and had lost an eye during the Winnipeg General Strike. Just thought I'd check, anyway. He was a pretty interesting guy. I'm somewhat of an information junkie, and reallly appreciated your writing. I know a few of those players, even the supposed "good guys" (they play dirty, too), and it was nice to see a few more pieces fit into place.

Kevin Beechum, Russell Hampshire's Role In Reuben Sturman Bombing Affair

ARGUED JANUARY 4, 1995--DECIDED MARCH 14, 1995 Before BAUER, and MANION, Circuit Judges, and MILLER, District Judge.

Reuben Sturman was convicted of conspiracy to commit extortion, attempted extortion, and travel in interstate commerce for the purposes of com- mitting extortion. 18 U.S.C. secs. 1951, 1952. He contends on appeal that the trial court proceeding was fraught with error and asks, on that basis, that we reverse his con- viction or at least vacate portions of his sentence. We find his arguments unpersuasive, and so we affirm.

I. From his home state of California, Reuben Sturman operated a nationwide wholesale and retail adult entertainment business for over thirty years. His power and influence was such that many in the industry believed that he was the industry. Sturman had substantial control over distribution of adult videos and magazines and marital aids. A significant portion of his income came from small operators located throughout the United States, who paid Sturman for supplies or services in organizing and run- ning local enterprises. Sturman's fiery relationship with operators in Phoenix, Cleveland, and Chicago led to the prosecution of this case.

Tamara Green took over the ownership and operation of the Book Cellar, a chain of several adult book stores in Phoenix, Arizona, after her husband, Howard, the store's previous owner, passed away in 1990. The Book Cellar leased peep show video equipment from Sturman. Soon after taking over the business, Green learned that, for several months, her husband had been paying Sturman twice the amount called for in the lease agreement. Green instructed her accountant to suspend all payments until October of 1991 when the accumulated credit would be exhausted and at which point they could resume payment at the contract rate.

Sturman was not particularly pleased with Green's decision. On several occasions in the fall of 1991, Sturman told Green's accountant and general manager that unless Green paid him the additional money, he would "send her a message." In November of 1991, Herbert Feinberg, an employee of Sturman's, asked Kevin Beechum to hire some people "to smash a bookstore in Phoenix, Arizona." Beechum hired Jay Brisette, Donald Mares, and Paul Mahn and instructed them to vandalize one of Green's stores because she wasn't paying the money which she owed. On December 21, 1991, Brisette, Mares, and Mahn entered Green's store with hammers and baseball bats and proceeded to cause approximately $10,000 in property dam- age. Convinced that this was Sturman's "message," Green resumed paying Sturman at a monthly rate twice that of the agreement. Sturman's secretary testified that when she asked Sturman why Green had resumed paying the higher rate, he replied, "I sent her a message and she understood."

Mel Kamins had been associated with Sturman since 1955. In 1986, Kamins purchased several Cleveland adult entertainment businesses from Sturman. His agreement with Sturman required Kamins to make monthly payments ranging between $60,000 and $90,000 for ten years to Sturman or Sturman's nominees.

In the meantime, the IRS had discovered that Sturman was significantly delinquent on his prior tax obligations. Consequently, the IRS served upon Kamins and others owing obligations to Sturman, tax levies directing those persons to pay directly to the IRS any money owed to Sturman.

After Kamins began complying with the levy, Sturman contacted Kamins in an effort to persuade him to ignore the levy and continue the payments. Alternatively, Sturman urged Kamins to skim his profits and pay Sturman in cash. Kamins refused.

Sturman proceeded to hire a man named James Long to investigate the level of security at Kamins's stores. Long had performed security-oriented work for Sturman in the past. Sturman told Long that Kamins had not been paying Sturman what he owed. Later that month (February 1992), Sturman and Long visited Kamins's store. When Kamins again insisted on honoring the IRS levy, Sturman wrote Kamins a note which read, "You are going to get a message." Though nothing ever was done to Kamins or his business, Feinberg did discuss with Kevin Beechum the possibility of hiring Beechum's men to do a few more jobs in Cleveland. It appears as if the only thing that saved Kamins from a fate similar to that of Green were the developments taking place in Chicago.

Roy May and his wife, Paula, owned and operated several adult entertainment businesses in Chicago. They had an arrangement with Sturman that entitled Sturman to a certain percentage of the profits received from their peep show receipts. Under this arrangement, the Mays typically delivered to one of Sturman's nominees a cash payment ranging from $60,000 to $100,000 every four to six weeks. This portion of the Mays' revenues was never reported to the IRS. Sturman frequently demanded that in addition to the payments, the Mays give him title to half of their real estate holdings, the purchase of which Sturman had absolutely nothing to do with. Understandably, the Mays refused these demands.

In 1987, Paula May was indicted for tax evasion. Subsequently, Roy May ceased making the payments to Sturman. Sturman then suggested that May pay Sturman the money through a consulting arrangement. Although he received no benefit from this arrangement, May consented to the deal for fear that if he did not, Sturman would ruin him financially. During the term of the consulting contract, May resumed his profit-skimming cash payments to Sturman, albeit at a lower rate.

In 1988, Roy May refused to renew the consulting con- tract. Again, however, his fear of what Sturman might do to him and his business caused him to agree to pay Sturman $3.7 million for the rights to show adult films produced by Sturman's new company, Wild Man Films Inc., despite knowing that these films were worth no more than $200,000. May never used these films.

When the IRS began sending tax levies to Sturman's various debtors, Sturman suggested that he and May cancel their Wild Man Films contract so that May would have nothing to pay to the IRS. They did so but soon thereafter, Sturman began pressuring May to resume paying him. Sturman asked May to start making payments to a company named Video Views, which Sturman insisted could not be traced to Sturman. Reluctant to violate the IRS levy, May refused.

In the spring of 1992, Feinberg once again hired Brisette and his men, this time for a job in Chicago. After the financial arrangements were completed, Brisette and three others, Donald Mares, Paul Mahn, and Joseph Martinez, flew to Chicago. They intended to plant several remote- controlled bombs at eight of May's Chicago stores. After successfully planting a bomb at the first site, Mares and Mahn were travelling to a store on Wells Street when one of their bombs detonated in their car at the intersection of Dearborn and Division streets. Mahn fled the scene. Mares died as a result of injuries sustained in the explosion.

After hearing about the explosion, Brisette and Martinez aborted their efforts and together with Mahn, returned to Los Angeles. From there, the plan continued to unravel.

Still panicked from what had happened in Chicago, Brisette began to cooperate with the FBI. As part of his co- operation, Brisette participated in a tape-recorded conversation with Feinberg. The FBI then approached Feinberg and asked him to cooperate in a case against Sturman. Feinberg refused and then went to meet with Russell Hampshire, another figure in the California adult entertainment industry and a friend of Sturman's. In his conversation with Hampshire, Feinberg stated that he had been hired by Sturman to damage some stores in Chicago and that one of the people involved was killed. Feinberg asked Hampshire to assure Sturman that Feinberg would not cooperate with the police as long as Sturman helped him with his legal fees. When Hampshire passed on Feinberg's message, Sturman told Hampshire that he would take care of Feinberg's legal fees. A few months later, Sturman transferred $25,000 from his account to an account held by Feinberg's attorney.

Sturman and Feinberg were indicted together but tried separately. Sturman was convicted on Counts One, Seven, and Eight of a ten-count indictment. Count One charged Sturman and Feinberg with conspiring to commit extortion with respect to Green, Kamins, and the Mays. 18 U.S.C. sec. 1951. Count Seven charged Sturman and Feinberg with an attempt to commit extortion in connection with their threats to the Mays between November of 1991 and November 1992. Id. Count Eight charged Sturman and Feinberg with causing persons to travel in interstate commerce for the purpose of promoting extortion. 18 U.S.C. sec. 1952. Sturman was acquitted of the remaining charges. The court sentenced Sturman to 235 months in prison and imposed a two-year term of supervised release. Sturman appeals his conviction and his sentence.

7/7/01

Reuben Sturman's Ex-Wife Marries Ron Braverman

Reuben Sturman's ex-wife Naomi Delgado married Doc Johnson owner Ron Braverman today.

XXX writes: "When I found out, I couldn't believe it! RS absolutely hated Ron those last few years...I bet he's having a fit right now!

"Ron Braverman is owner of Doc Johnson. Ron was working at an adult store in Amsterdam when he met RS. Reuben asked him if he'd like to go back to US and become rich...and the rest is history. Even though Reuben said that he actually had some documentation showing that he was owner of Doc Johnson, after Ron got out of jail he said he'd 'done his time' and 'earned' DJ. To my knowledge, after that he NEVER gave Reuben another dime, refused all RS' calls from prison, etc! (Course Ron wasn't the ONLY one to turn his back on Reuben after he went to jail...just about everyone did, claiming they were 'afraid'!) Mark Arnold (aka Ed Powers, who volunteered to be documented 'owner' of 4 Play Video when RS bought it) is one of the very few who continued to send Reuben $ in prison. Jackie (from Platinum Paradise back East) also regularly sent Reuben $ in prison."