MIAMI - FBI agents inspected the 2257 records of five adult content producers in Florida last week and found at least four of the companies in violation of the law.
"We inspected two [companies] in Miami, one in Naples, one in Tampa and one in Orlando," supervisory special agent Stephen G. Lawrence told AVN. "We again ran the gamut from absolutely no records to the standard violations that we have previously seen - no cross-referencing system, things like that. I can only speak to four of the five companies – and to the best of my knowledge, actually all five companies had violations."Lawrence declined to name the companies involved in the latest round of inspections, which took place Sept. 17 - 19. He confirmed that the same FBI team responsible for 2257 inspections in California carried out the Florida records inspections.
When asked if any of the companies had been found to have employed minors, Lawrence said, "It's hard to answer that because we don’t have the records. Some of the companies didn’t have all the records available, so we have to write that up and give them some time to respond before we issue our report."
Lawrence said the grace period for companies to follow up with the FBI is "generally a week."
Local sources say that Tampa-based V9 Studios, Candid Cam and Real Party Girls were among the companies visited; only Candid Cam has confirmed at post time.Although some of these companies deal with internet content, the inspections were focused on DVDs.
“We were in good order at the time of the inspection,” said Candid Cam attorney Mark Dolan. “My clients have been very serious about keeping their records since 1998. They also have updated software to manage all of our records, which is a big help and the FBI really appreciated it. I guess the FBI is really starting to do more of these checks. They mentioned that they have already completed 65 of them so far and that they would be spending two days in Florida conducting 2257 inspections.”
Dolan was present at the four-hour inspection by about five agents that occurred in the company’s conference room. Dolan described the agents as “very pleasant, professional and low key.”
Dolan stated that the agents had apparently viewed different Candid Cam titles and had books for each title that they had made up of different screen captures. Dolan said that they were prepared, armed with all identifications for all releases.
“There were a few small items they asked us to address,” Dolan said. “One was that one of the IDs that had been faxed to us was illegible. They wanted a clean copy so they could see the clear photo, name and birth on the ID. One more thing they wanted was a recent address on our DVDs. We used to be in Tampa and we moved to St. Petersberg so they wanted the Custodian of Records, which is something you have to put on the box of the DVD and inside the body of the DVD if you were to view it. They wanted that address corrected. One more issue they addressed was that there was one title which we had releases for every performer. Yet, they wanted that one title broken out by scene and they just wanted the IDs of the people who were performing sex acts in the title. We had IDs for everyone, including people who were clothed in the background and they wanted us to break it down for them and tell them what scenes they were in.”
Candid Cam was given a report and asked to respond to the items within a week.
“We responded within three days,” Dolan said in closing. “I called the agent today to make sure they received everything in good order and I’m waiting for a callback.”
Two independent sources told AVN that the Bureau has targeted a total of 17 companies in Florida for 2257 records inspection.
AVN will report further details as they become available.
Bianca Fox also contributed to this report.
