Feds Charge Indiana Man with Obscenity Violations
 

Feds Charge Indiana Man with Obscenity Violations
Grand jury indicts Hard2Find Videos owner for shipping 'obscene' DVDs

By: David Sullivan

Posted: 05/22/2008

WASHINGTON - A federal grand jury in Martinsburg, W. Va. has indicted Loren Jay Adams for shipping allegedly "obscene" DVDs through the mail.

FBI agents arrested Adams at 6 p.m. yesterday in Indianapolis, a source told AVN, seizing three videos from the premises. Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division announced the charges today in a U.S. Department of Justice press release.


Adams, 45, is charged with" transporting obscene matters through the U.S. mail and transportation of obscene matters for sale or distribution by means of interstate commerce."

According to the indictment returned by the grand jury May 20, the DVDs were shipped from Indiana to Martinsburg through the U.S. mail in February 2008.

The indictment identifies Adams as the owner/operator of three businesses: Hard2Find Videos; L & J; and L and J.

The website for Hard2Find Videos is located at www.creampieMILFsluts.com and features a selection of amateur content. One of the videos offered through the site includes fisting scenes.

According to the DOJ press release, the government is separately seeking forfeiture of assets belonging to Adams, "including certain obscene materials and all property derived from profits or other proceeds obtained from or used to commit the alleged offenses."

Adams faces a maximum prison sentence of five years on each of the charged counts.

Trial Attorney Pamela Satterfield of the Criminal Division's Obscenity Prosecution Task Force is prosecuting the case with investigatory assistance from the FBI.

They still seem to be sticking to the mail order theme with these prosecutions, they have yet to go after an internet only shop (that I'm aware of).

Yet another example of why I won't ship DVD's...Online digital delivery only.

Yeah,I think they arent sure how a internet only would go. It could blow up on them big time.

Not only that, but each one I've seen so far has been revolving around an "extreme" niche that many of us try to stay away from any way.

I always thought fisting was a no-no in the states.

damn......

It is.. That is why it is always a real with cam girls to never go past the knuckles..

fisting is extreme?

By law what is actually Obcene or Extreme is a grey area....

But fisting and piss drinking are two things that are clear.. Just as rape fantacy and shit play are..

Now if this guy fights this to the end and wins then the US will have the niche opened up to us to produce and bring a whole new meaning to fisting..

"the government is separately seeking forfeiture of assets belonging to Adams"

Reminds me of the book Smoke and Mirrors.. if the govt. wants something they can't have legally they make up or hype charges and take it.

It seems like the strategy is to go after a company that offers content via mail order AND via the internet, get an across the board conviction and then try to use that as precedent for an internet only case. (When it comes to terms of defining "community standards" in relation to the internet)

LMAO .. and I own www.piss.com and Extreme Honey the fisting puking slut from hell ... It's good to be a Canadian ..

Our country is doing so well at the moment. I'm sure glad that my tax dollars aren't being wasted on anything stupid.

/sarcasm

Interesting :)

Have many of you online only commenter's and others even following the other case going on right now?

I think it is stupid to put a mark on sexual creativity. As long as the chicks are of age and want it then leave it be. Why can't they just crack down on child porn and inbreds.

Without sexual repression, hiding it, and making it as taboo as humanly possible -there then really is no industry to present it. So in a way it is a double edge sword.

Hey wait a second, what so wrong about inbreds? Could not a chick of legal age want it, as you put it.

I was surprised by this one, especially in light of the recent indictment against Evil Angel.

I can only surmise they wanted a smaller, easier target and a plea bargain, if the EA case drags on which it probably will. It is an election year and I think the Bushies need to show some progress on the morality front.

The small guys are the ones I feel sorry for. EA has the $$$ to fight. I doubt highly this guy can cough up $100,000+ to even begin to defend himself.

damn, that sucks

It's because mailing it through the US postal system makes it a federal crime. Why any one would send any adult content via US mail is beyond me. Send the shit Fedex or UPS.

The feds use the oldest trick in the book, and people seem to keep falling for it..

Yeah but the thing is that "obscene" is in the eye of the beholder ultimately. It's sort of a truism. NOW, *IF* it was shipped with the material in plain view, it could be "obscene" to any number of people. But if it was wrapped or boxed or something, then only the recipient would view it and clearly they do not feel it's obscene since they specifically requested it.

Some of these laws were made before VCR's were even invented, and were meant to apply to phsyical adult book stores and people walking out of them with magazine covers in plain view and shit like that. There is going to come a time when someone smells the coffee and actually works on new laws that might apply to this century.

I know that using the US Mail is the real problem here, and yeah for any shipper to use US Mail for what COULD be construed as obscene was pretty much stupid. But at some point, the issue itself of "obscenity" and IF someone other than the recipient see's it will HAVE to be addressed. As it stands now, the only people who will be FORCED to view material that they might not want to is a jury!! Completely unfair process.

There's the Karen Fletcher ("Red Rose") in which Fletcher is copping a plea -- the material there was text-only, and so far as I'm aware, only available online. I don't believe there were any DVDs or other hard product involved in the Ray Guhn case, either.

Michael, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe using FedEx, UPS or any other private courier would prevent the government from charging a distributor with interstate transport of obscene materials, either...? Using a private courier *might* remove a couple of charging options for the prosecutor specifically relating to using the US mail to transport obscene materials, but I believe they can indict you for interstate transport regardless of whether you use the USPS or some other form of courier. Unless I'm mistaken, you could pack the DVDs in a truck, drive them to another state and hand them directly to the customer -- and doing so would still be 'interstate transport' of the material... right?

Charlie Chaplin was charged for transporting a woman into new york for morally questionable work.. It was the great purity and morality times when prostitution was bringing in more money than shipbuilding and manufacturing combined.

"Chaplin was charged with violating the 1910 Mann Act, also called the White Slave Traffic Act. This federal law prohibited people from transporting women across state lines for "immoral purposes." Originally intended to be a law against prostitution, at times its enforcement was expanded to include any activity considered immoral. Chaplin was acquitted of the charges brought against him in the first two indictments to go to trial and later, the other charges were dropped"

Seriously, "obscenity" is not and SHOULD not be a third party morals interpretation because history shows exactly where it leads.

Those two cases are very different than going after someone like say Bangbros or Naughty America.

The red rose case had to do with CP, which is a totally different beast than obscenity. Text or not, internet or not, it doesn't belong in an obscenity discussion.

In the Ray Guhn case the charges range from racketeering to prostitution, fraud, and making or promoting obscene performances. So again, that's not a cut and dried obscenity prosecution based on content available only via the internet.

It is.

Furthermore, there is a "Cambria List" (Hustler's Free Speech Attorney) out that anyone in this business with....

1. Common sense.
2. No money to fght off the government

...should be adhering to. :disgust

There is a documentary on this stuff over on the PBS website. 'Some' may wanna bone up on such things.

:2 cents:

Ah, sorry -- I guess I kinda missed your point, and that you were speaking of cases where obscenity was the only charge/issue at hand. In Fletcher's case, the charge itself was obscenity, and not anything relating to CP, but clearly the fact that the stories involved children was the reason for the charge being brought in the first place.

It's always the mom & pop shops to get the shitty end of the stick legally... I feel bad for him, but there's been that "hostile zipcodes" list for years now.

You can absolutely still get charged with interstate transport of obscene materials, even if you ship them via FedEx, UPS, or drive them there yourself. Using the US mail just gets the postal inspector involved and makes it a more serious crime.

When I was still running adult bookstores I was at our warehouse in Durand, Michigan, and I took our cargo van full of VHS tapes and novelties to one of our stores in Memphis, Tennessee. In Tennessee you are not allowed to show hardcore penetration scenes on the box covers of at the time VHS tapes, or now DVD's, and we had copies with mosaics over the pictures of penetration on the boxes specifically for the Tennessee stores. The warehouse workers loaded the wrong copies in the van, and I was pulled over in Tennessee by a cop that liked to harass us at the Memphis store and was charged with interstate transfer of obscene materials. It was a very long and EXPENSIVE process to deal with...

Yeah, and unfortunately for free speech, these charges are very very expensive to defend yourself against and the government knows this.....which is why they almost always reach a plea deal with the small fries in these cases.

As a tax-payer, I do NOT feel that 'fisting' is 'obscene'.

What I DO feel is 'obscene', is the blatant abuse of tax dollars being used for an election year witch hunt.

LOL this is insane.

A guy putting his dick into a girl = ok.

But a fist... (not even a private part) is "obscene".

I think its actually less obscene to see a hand then seeing a dick.

OK, folks, I know Jay from Indy, and I can only say that this was overdue for a long time. This is not a simple obscenity case. Many consider him a total scumbag. He has been violating basically any law in any civilized country, plus, if I remember correctly, he got nabbed a couple of years ago and was warned. He was selling copied/stolen "private" movies, and pissed off lots of people. He started out swapping swingers stuff, copied it and sold people's private material without their consent. He was selling animal porn on top of that, NONE of his regular material had any 2257 records. He was also violently promoting his enterprise in forums and Yahoo Groups, which didn't make him lots of friends either. I am not judging him, but you just can't piss in everybody's jacket and think you're going to get away with it.

That is my view, but they use that Miller Test for everything to determine if it is obscene. I don't know if this is even possible, but the Miller Test needs to be challenged. That was originally brought into play for a trial involving a guy who sent out hardcore advertising through the mail and it went to the wrong people.

I can see using the Miller Test if there is an element of surprise to the sexual material (billboards, bulk mail, store advertising etc...). But when someone knows and accepts what they are about to see in private, the Miller Test seems very irrelevant.

It doesn't matter if you use the US Postal Service, FedEx, UPS, or DHL ; you're still shipping obscene material across state lines, which is a federal offense.

Well it was already answered, but yes interstate transport is just that... it doesn't matter how or who transports it.

Bingo. That is why we dissolved our adult Indiana corp and I reopened it elsewhere. Too risky.