HIALEAH, Fla. - Director Bill Fisher sustained losses of more than $165,000 in camera equipment when his Fisher Studios was robbed at gunpoint last Friday, April 4.
Two armed men entered the Hialeah building around 8:30 p.m. and tied up employees with duct tape, while two others headed for the camera storage room. Taken in addition to the cameras were two quad-core Macintosh G-5s, multiple 30" and 23" HD screens and some sound equipment.
Fisher Studios produces Club Jenna's Filthy Films line, as well as titles from Cezar Capone, Amateur District and Fisher Films. Fisher is offering complete immunity and a reward of $50,000 for information leading to the arrest of one or more of the perpetrators, who seemed to have ample knowledge of the building's layout.
"We are hoping one of the guys turns on the others and that's why the offer of immunity goes along with the cash," he said.
Fisher himself was not present at the time of the invasion. But, he told AVN, "it was scary" for those that were. "A lot of my team was really shaken up. One of my editors had a gun at his head. ‘I thought I was gonna die,' he told me. They weren't amateurs, man. They took every camera I own, cameras I've had for 20 years." None of the equipment was insured.
Fisher thinks the robbery was "a really tight inside job" or the work of men posing as fire inspectors who had canvassed the building two weeks before.
"They let 'em walk around, do whatever they wanted. Then on Friday morning, the real fire inspectors came. We said, ‘Weren't you here two weeks ago?'" That night the robbery occurred. "So we think now that they were casing us."
Friends from several studios in Florida and California have rallied to Fisher's aid with offers of equipment to help tide him over. "We're a really solid company," Fisher said, "so it's not going to put us out of business."
He is optimistic about recovery. "We have a composite sketch [of the perpetrators] and the police have many leads. We will get them."
For a detailed list of stolen cameras and equipment number, go to http://fisherfilms.ipower.com//page2.html.
Fisher can be emailed at [email protected].
