RENO, Nev.–The multi-millionaire creator of Girls Gone Wild sits in a jail visiting room, looking pale but rested from eight months of incarceration. He talks to a visitor through glass, often yelling, sometimes tapping on the glass for emphasis, railing into a handset against "evil" and "vengeful" government officials and vowing to sue them all.
"Enough is enough," he spits out. "I am not a criminal."
Joe Francis, 34, has long been a polarizing figure, having made his riches enticing young women at spring break locations to bare their breasts for the cameras for his popular videos.
Stuck in jail in Reno, Francis is desperately trying to drum up public sympathy, if not win release, to expose how unfairly he believes authorities have treated him. In recent months, he has taken out ads, sent out news releases, appeared on dozens of radio and TV talk shows and used a website, meetjoefrancis.com, to relate his convoluted story while his lawyers file motions charging prosecutorial misconduct and ask for investigations.
And as he goes about trying to transform his image from soft-porn entrepreneur to victim of vindictive officials, support has come from unusual quarters. His most vocal allies are not the Hollywood A-listers who have vacationed at his Mexico estate, but conservative radio hosts and their listeners, who suspect government shenanigans.
"Even though I don't approve of what Joe Francis does for a living, he's caught up in a nightmare," said Mike Gallagher, one of the syndicated radio hosts who have given Francis a platform in recent weeks via jail telephone. "There's a real issue here of somebody not getting bail."
Francis's troubles started in 2003 when he included Panama City Beach, a Panhandle city of white-sand beaches on the Gulf of Mexico, in a highly publicized pay-per-view event from three spring break locations. The then-mayor, Lee Sullivan, took exception and law enforcement officials cracked down on acts of lewd behaviour, which interfered with the filming. Francis sued the officials, claiming violation of his First Amendment rights, and got them to settle and back down. But Francis and some of his crew were arrested when the father of one of two women filmed in a shower scene at the hotel room the filmmakers had rented contacted the county sheriff's office, saying the girls were minors.
Officials confiscated Francis's Ferrari and private jet, announcing cocaine had been found on the plane. Francis was charged with more than 70 counts, including racketeering, drug trafficking, prostitution and promoting the sexual performance of children.
A judge, citing a flawed search warrant, ended up throwing out all but six of the criminal counts, which revolve around the use of minors in a sexual performance. And it turned out that no cocaine had been found on the plane.
But Francis was also saddled with a civil suit for emotional distress from the two girls in the shower scene, who were 17. While Francis was out on bail in the criminal case, which is pending, the judge overseeing the suit ordered him to return to Florida to mediate the suit. That civil case landed Francis in jail in April when the women's lawyers complained he was verbally abusive in negotiations. Judge John Richard Smoak Jr. of the Northern District of Florida held Francis in civil contempt for not properly participating in mediation and ordered him into custody. Francis, by then back home in Los Angeles, showed up to do his time four days late, which earned him another contempt order, this time for criminal contempt.
Francis settled the lawsuit while in jail in Bay County, Fla., but his troubles were not over. Before he could get out, guards found sleeping pills, prescription medication for anxiety and high cholesterol, and $700 in cash in his cell, and he soon faced criminal charges for introducing contraband into a detention facility.
Because of the new charges, his bail on the 2003 criminal case was revoked, and bail in the contraband case was denied.
Francis would still be jailed in Florida if not for another twist: Federal officials in Nevada charged him with two counts of tax evasion, so in June he was transferred to Washoe County Jail to answer the new charges. He faces trial on the tax evasion case but denies any wrongdoing.
In fact, he says, he says the tax evasion case is a godsend. That case keeps him from going back to Bay County. He remains in Nevada while his lawyers try to get the Florida charges dismissed.
Here, Francis spends his days on the pay phone talking to his lawyers, arranging interviews and keeping tabs on Girls Gone Wild and Mantra Entertainment, his Los Angeles-based company. The business, with 350 employees, now brings in nearly $100 million a year in revenue, he said, and has branched out from DVDs to the Internet, mobile phones and apparel lines.
Francis acknowledges having made mistakes. He said he regretted reporting to jail in Florida late while trying to get the judge's order stayed.
But he is hardly contrite. He has a defence for every bad turn along the way: The two minors filmed in Panama City Beach lied about their age to the cameraman and would have been vetted before the video was released; the mediation of their suit turned sour on both sides and it didn't help him that one of the girls' lawyers was Smoak's former law partner; he walked into jail with pills and cash because he was not searched and didn't know better.
Francis, argues this is all payback for defying the power structure in Bay County with his First Amendment lawsuit. In his latest salvo, Francis filed a motion in October to have charges dismissed, accusing the prosecutor in the case involving underage girls of tainting the jury pool by making disparaging statements about him on national television and showing a portion of the shower video to Nightline.
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