Joe Francis
Encyclopedia
Joseph R. "Joe" Francis (born April 1, 1973) is an American entrepreneur, known as the founder of GGW Brands which produces the Girls Gone Wild
and Guys Gone Wild
DVD
series.
Francis grew up in Laguna Beach, California
. His parents are Raymond and Maria Francis and he has three sisters. He attended Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic School, Rumsey Hall boarding school, a military academy, Corona del Mar High School, and Laguna Beach High School. Following high school Francis attended and graduated with a degree in business administration from the University of Southern California
.
Upon graduation Francis worked with his father's business, then for various media production companies, where he founded "Banned from TV" videos using clips not suitable for mainstream broadcast from the studios he worked at to market on a direct to consumer basis. "Banned from TV" made Francis a millionaire by 24. It was from "Banned from TV" that Francis developed the concept of college girls exposing their breasts and marketing these videos direct to consumers as well. Initially marketed as "College Girls Gone Wild", Girls Gone Wild
was born from this concept. Soon the videos of the young women exposing themselves became wildly successful and Francis became even richer and more publicly known.
and Spring Break
. Seeing the marketing appeal, he titled that footage Girls Gone Wild
(GGW). He eventually stopped licensing the material and began producing it himself.
In 1997, at the age of 24, Francis founded Mantra Films, now known as GGW Brands Sellers of ‘Girls Gone Wild’ Videos. Building on Francis' discovery that he could film college-age women "going wild," including baring their breasts for the cameras at spring breaks and other locales. Mantra also spun off the Guys Gone Wild
DVD series.
Francis' Girls Gone Wild is regularly referenced in today’s society and pop culture atmosphere and was recently cited as an example of "sexualization," number 23 on USA Today
s list of the "25 Trends that Changed America".
Ariel Levy
for perpetuating what some consider "the new double standard," which equates the objectification of women with sexual liberation.
Francis and his company has come under legal scrutiny on a number of occasions. Recurring allegations include that footage of women engaged in sexual activity was used without the consent of the women, that Mantra Films engaged in sexual exploitation of minors, and that incomplete records were kept of participants in GGW videos.
better known as the prostitute involved in the Eliot Spitzer
scandal that led to his resignation as New York governor in March 2008, dropped the suit after Francis released footage showing her agreeing to be filmed.
, during spring break
2003, Francis was arrested and then released on a $165,000 bond. He was initially charged with 71 separate counts, including racketeering, drug trafficking, and child pornography
. Police confiscated his private jet and other property. At a July 27, 2006 hearing, the judge threw out 200 hours of videotape and hundreds of other key pieces of evidence in the case, and on January 4, 2007 dismissed almost all of the charges, ruling that "the evidence did not support the allegations," and the seized assets were returned. Francis plead guilty to several counts of 18 U.S.C. § 2257 record keeping violation and was fined $1.6M and sentenced to perform community service.
On April 12, 2007, Francis was accused of bribery, possession of a controlled substance, and introducing contraband (cash and drugs) into the Panama City, Florida
jail. The Associated Press
reported that Francis (in jail for contempt of court) offered a guard one hundred and then five hundred dollars for a bottled water. Jailers allegedly found drugs including Lunesta and lorazepam
in the jail cell. This is despite the fact that Francis had disclosed the medication upon his incarceration. Francis reportedly faced up to five years in prison if convicted on these charges. On March 12, 2008 Francis was convicted on child abuse
and prostitution
charges after pleading no contest
in a plea bargain
. He also pleaded guilty to charges related to having contraband in his cell during the time he was held in jail. He was sentenced to time served (339 days) and more than $60,000 in fines and costs.
On March 25, 2008, four women filed suit against him in Florida for filming them while underage, with one girl claiming she had been 13 when filmed. On April 7, 2011, this trial was decided with no award for the plaintiffs.
In April 2011 Francis faced the same judge in Panama City Fl. who first sent him to jail back in 2007 . Francis represented himself in a lawsuit against him in Federal Court in Florida. Four female plaintiffs alleged they had suffered emotional distress from being videotaped and shown in Francis' Girls Gone Wild video series. After being reprimanded by the judge, threatened with jail time and held in contempt, Francis hired local lawyers to finish handling the trial. After eight days of trial, the jury found in favor of Francis and against the plaintiff.
on two counts of tax evasion
Francis was charged with filing a fraudulent corporate tax return for a company for which he allegedly is the sole shareholder. The United States Department of Justice asserts that Francis claimed over $20 million in false business deductions on his corporate tax returns during 2002 and 2003. The Los Angeles Times
quoted his attorney, Jan L. Handzlik, as saying: "The government has chosen to make a criminal case out of what we believe to be, at most, a civil tax dispute..." A trial date was set and subsequently vacated in the case.
On April 22, 2008, a court order was entered changing the location of the case (a change of venue) to Los Angeles, in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, as case number 2:08-cr-00494-SJO. At a hearing on July 21, 2008, Francis pleaded not guilty to felony tax evasion. Francis' attorney, Robert Bernhoft, said that tax returns for the businesses were prepared and filed by a former corporate accountant without being shown to Francis. Bernhoft asserts that when the accountant left the companies, the accountant contacted the IRS to report the accounting mistakes with the hope of collecting a bonus from the government Tax Whistleblower Program.
On February 2, 2009, Francis was arrested for failing to attend his court hearing. The following day, he was released to home detention and electronic monitoring on the grounds that he was too sick to attend the hearing.
In September 2009, Francis pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns and bribing Nevada jail workers. The plea agreement reportedly requires him to pay $250,000 in restitution. He would receive credit for the time he has served in jail, and would be subject to one year of supervised release. On November 5, 2009, U.S. District Judge S. James Otero accepted Francis’ deal on the grounds that a key witness withheld information from prosecutors.
On November 6, 2009, The IRS filed a federal tax lien in the amount of $33,819,087.14 for failing to pay personal income taxes for the 2001, 2002, and 2003 calendar years. On or about November 18, 2009; Francis himself stated the IRS seized over $100,000,000 in cash from various bank accounts.
Girls Gone Wild
The Girls Gone Wild franchise, created by Joe Francis, is a video series by the production company Mantra Films, Inc., which is headquartered in Santa Monica, California.-Content:...
and Guys Gone Wild
Guys Gone Wild
The Guys Gone Wild video series is the male analogue of Girls Gone Wild by Mantra Entertainment. These video tapes and DVDs feature much the same content as the Girls equivalent, only instead showing young men performing for the camera — e.g., in the shower, playing football naked, etc.The first...
DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
series.
Francis grew up in Laguna Beach, California
Laguna Beach, California
Laguna Beach is a seaside resort city and artist community located in southern Orange County, California, United States, approximately southwest of the county seat of Santa Ana...
. His parents are Raymond and Maria Francis and he has three sisters. He attended Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic School, Rumsey Hall boarding school, a military academy, Corona del Mar High School, and Laguna Beach High School. Following high school Francis attended and graduated with a degree in business administration from the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
.
Upon graduation Francis worked with his father's business, then for various media production companies, where he founded "Banned from TV" videos using clips not suitable for mainstream broadcast from the studios he worked at to market on a direct to consumer basis. "Banned from TV" made Francis a millionaire by 24. It was from "Banned from TV" that Francis developed the concept of college girls exposing their breasts and marketing these videos direct to consumers as well. Initially marketed as "College Girls Gone Wild", Girls Gone Wild
Girls Gone Wild
The Girls Gone Wild franchise, created by Joe Francis, is a video series by the production company Mantra Films, Inc., which is headquartered in Santa Monica, California.-Content:...
was born from this concept. Soon the videos of the young women exposing themselves became wildly successful and Francis became even richer and more publicly known.
Beginning of a brand
Francis' first video, sold through commercials, was a series of private clips and news footage deletions of fatal accidents that were considered too graphic for broadcast. Banned From Television was considered a commercial success and it spawned other sequels. One of the videos that Francis had licensed contained footage of female college students flashing their breasts during Mardi GrasMardi Gras
The terms "Mardi Gras" , "Mardi Gras season", and "Carnival season", in English, refer to events of the Carnival celebrations, beginning on or after Epiphany and culminating on the day before Ash Wednesday...
and Spring Break
Spring break
Spring break – also known as March break, Study week or Reading week in the United Kingdom and some parts of Canada – is a recess in early spring at universities and schools in the United States, Canada, mainland China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, the United...
. Seeing the marketing appeal, he titled that footage Girls Gone Wild
Girls Gone Wild
The Girls Gone Wild franchise, created by Joe Francis, is a video series by the production company Mantra Films, Inc., which is headquartered in Santa Monica, California.-Content:...
(GGW). He eventually stopped licensing the material and began producing it himself.
In 1997, at the age of 24, Francis founded Mantra Films, now known as GGW Brands Sellers of ‘Girls Gone Wild’ Videos. Building on Francis' discovery that he could film college-age women "going wild," including baring their breasts for the cameras at spring breaks and other locales. Mantra also spun off the Guys Gone Wild
Guys Gone Wild
The Guys Gone Wild video series is the male analogue of Girls Gone Wild by Mantra Entertainment. These video tapes and DVDs feature much the same content as the Girls equivalent, only instead showing young men performing for the camera — e.g., in the shower, playing football naked, etc.The first...
DVD series.
Francis' Girls Gone Wild is regularly referenced in today’s society and pop culture atmosphere and was recently cited as an example of "sexualization," number 23 on USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
s list of the "25 Trends that Changed America".
Controversies
On 22 January 2004 Francis's Bel Air home was broken into and he was forced at gunpoint to star in a homosexual themed video. Francis has been criticized by third wave feministThird-wave feminism
Third-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but often marked as beginning in the 1980s and continuing to the present...
Ariel Levy
Ariel Levy
Ariel Levy is a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and author of the book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Vogue, Slate, Men's Journal and Blender...
for perpetuating what some consider "the new double standard," which equates the objectification of women with sexual liberation.
Francis and his company has come under legal scrutiny on a number of occasions. Recurring allegations include that footage of women engaged in sexual activity was used without the consent of the women, that Mantra Films engaged in sexual exploitation of minors, and that incomplete records were kept of participants in GGW videos.
Civil
In June 2007, Francis and his company became the subject of a lawsuit claiming that images had been used without the subject's permission. However, the plaintiff, Ashley Alexandra DupréAshley Alexandra Dupré
Ashley Rae Maika DiPietro better known by the stage name Ashley Alexandra Dupré, is a former call girl. She is currently an American sex columnist for the New York Post and a singer. She became a public figure when it was disclosed that she was the woman at the center of the Eliot Spitzer...
better known as the prostitute involved in the Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Laurence Spitzer is an American lawyer, former Democratic Party politician, and political commentator. He was the co-host of In the Arena, a talk-show and punditry forum broadcast on CNN until CNN cancelled his show in July of 2011...
scandal that led to his resignation as New York governor in March 2008, dropped the suit after Francis released footage showing her agreeing to be filmed.
Charges in Florida
In an incident at Panama City Beach, FloridaFlorida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, during spring break
Spring break
Spring break – also known as March break, Study week or Reading week in the United Kingdom and some parts of Canada – is a recess in early spring at universities and schools in the United States, Canada, mainland China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, the United...
2003, Francis was arrested and then released on a $165,000 bond. He was initially charged with 71 separate counts, including racketeering, drug trafficking, and child pornography
Child pornography
Child pornography refers to images or films and, in some cases, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child...
. Police confiscated his private jet and other property. At a July 27, 2006 hearing, the judge threw out 200 hours of videotape and hundreds of other key pieces of evidence in the case, and on January 4, 2007 dismissed almost all of the charges, ruling that "the evidence did not support the allegations," and the seized assets were returned. Francis plead guilty to several counts of 18 U.S.C. § 2257 record keeping violation and was fined $1.6M and sentenced to perform community service.
On April 12, 2007, Francis was accused of bribery, possession of a controlled substance, and introducing contraband (cash and drugs) into the Panama City, Florida
Panama City, Florida
-Personal income:The median income for a household in the city was $31,572, and the median income for a family was $40,890. Males had a median income of $30,401 versus $21,431 for females. The per capita income for the city was $17,830...
jail. The Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
reported that Francis (in jail for contempt of court) offered a guard one hundred and then five hundred dollars for a bottled water. Jailers allegedly found drugs including Lunesta and lorazepam
Lorazepam
Lorazepam is a high-potency short-to-intermediate-acting 3-hydroxy benzodiazepine drug that has all five intrinsic benzodiazepine effects: anxiolytic, amnesic, sedative/hypnotic, anticonvulsant, antiemetic and muscle relaxant...
in the jail cell. This is despite the fact that Francis had disclosed the medication upon his incarceration. Francis reportedly faced up to five years in prison if convicted on these charges. On March 12, 2008 Francis was convicted on child abuse
Child abuse
Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...
and prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
charges after pleading no contest
Nolo contendere
is a legal term that comes from the Latin for "I do not wish to contend." It is also referred to as a plea of no contest.In criminal trials, and in some common law jurisdictions, it is a plea where the defendant neither admits nor disputes a charge, serving as an alternative to a pleading of...
in a plea bargain
Plea bargain
A plea bargain is an agreement in a criminal case whereby the prosecutor offers the defendant the opportunity to plead guilty, usually to a lesser charge or to the original criminal charge with a recommendation of a lighter than the maximum sentence.A plea bargain allows criminal defendants to...
. He also pleaded guilty to charges related to having contraband in his cell during the time he was held in jail. He was sentenced to time served (339 days) and more than $60,000 in fines and costs.
On March 25, 2008, four women filed suit against him in Florida for filming them while underage, with one girl claiming she had been 13 when filmed. On April 7, 2011, this trial was decided with no award for the plaintiffs.
In April 2011 Francis faced the same judge in Panama City Fl. who first sent him to jail back in 2007 . Francis represented himself in a lawsuit against him in Federal Court in Florida. Four female plaintiffs alleged they had suffered emotional distress from being videotaped and shown in Francis' Girls Gone Wild video series. After being reprimanded by the judge, threatened with jail time and held in contempt, Francis hired local lawyers to finish handling the trial. After eight days of trial, the jury found in favor of Francis and against the plaintiff.
Federal criminal tax problems
On April 11, 2007, Francis was indicted by a federal grand jury in Reno, NevadaReno, Nevada
Reno is the county seat of Washoe County, Nevada, United States. The city has a population of about 220,500 and is the most populous Nevada city outside of the Las Vegas metropolitan area...
on two counts of tax evasion
Tax avoidance and tax evasion
Tax noncompliance describes a range of activities that are unfavorable to a state's tax system. These include tax avoidance, which refers to reducing taxes by legal means, and tax evasion which refers to the criminal non-payment of tax liabilities....
Francis was charged with filing a fraudulent corporate tax return for a company for which he allegedly is the sole shareholder. The United States Department of Justice asserts that Francis claimed over $20 million in false business deductions on his corporate tax returns during 2002 and 2003. The Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
quoted his attorney, Jan L. Handzlik, as saying: "The government has chosen to make a criminal case out of what we believe to be, at most, a civil tax dispute..." A trial date was set and subsequently vacated in the case.
On April 22, 2008, a court order was entered changing the location of the case (a change of venue) to Los Angeles, in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, as case number 2:08-cr-00494-SJO. At a hearing on July 21, 2008, Francis pleaded not guilty to felony tax evasion. Francis' attorney, Robert Bernhoft, said that tax returns for the businesses were prepared and filed by a former corporate accountant without being shown to Francis. Bernhoft asserts that when the accountant left the companies, the accountant contacted the IRS to report the accounting mistakes with the hope of collecting a bonus from the government Tax Whistleblower Program.
On February 2, 2009, Francis was arrested for failing to attend his court hearing. The following day, he was released to home detention and electronic monitoring on the grounds that he was too sick to attend the hearing.
In September 2009, Francis pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns and bribing Nevada jail workers. The plea agreement reportedly requires him to pay $250,000 in restitution. He would receive credit for the time he has served in jail, and would be subject to one year of supervised release. On November 5, 2009, U.S. District Judge S. James Otero accepted Francis’ deal on the grounds that a key witness withheld information from prosecutors.
“It took us seven months, but in the end we demonstrated that the felony tax charges never should have been brought in the first place. As a result, the indictment was dismissed and the charges were reduced to only two misdemeanors with no jail time." Brad Brian, lead trial attorney,
On November 6, 2009, The IRS filed a federal tax lien in the amount of $33,819,087.14 for failing to pay personal income taxes for the 2001, 2002, and 2003 calendar years. On or about November 18, 2009; Francis himself stated the IRS seized over $100,000,000 in cash from various bank accounts.
External links
- "'Girls Gone Wild' founder Joe Francis on life in jail", transcript of Fox News's On the Record interview with Greta Van SusterenGreta Van SusterenGreta Van Susteren is an American commentator and television personality on the Fox News Channel, where she hosts On the Record w/ Greta Van Susteren...
, October 19, 2007