No sooner did industry vet Mickey Blank open the doors of his new DVD company, Digital Vision Productions, person or persons crowbarred those doors and stole about $60 to $70,000 worth of DVD equipment.
Blank: "I'm jumping both feet into the DVD business. We've got the equipment, I got a great tech who's doing a beautiful job who knows what he's doing. We set up about 99% of everything. Wednesday night we got hit and they cleaned us out. We've got a lot of suspicions.
"But I can't begin to tell you what a great business DVD's are. The way I got into this was a couple of guys were doing my DVD's. They'd tell me three week turnaround, eight weeks go by and I still don't have them and they're all jammed up."
Frustrated with the way things were going with that turnaround, Blank put up some money and got the right people set in place.. "Long story short, I was ready to go," he said. "I had a press release announcing everything and they came in cleaned us out. We're located at 6617 Independence Avenue in Canoga Park."
G. Ross: "I'm afraid if I post your address you're going to get visited again."
Blank: "That's why I'm buying two pitbulls and a machine gun....I'm not a techy. I just do the adding and subtracting. I was into this for about $125,000 and figured I would have gotten it back by June. They probably got us for about $70,000 worth of computers and the stuff that goes with it."
G. Ross: "Someone knew what to grab."
Blank: "It was done very professionally. They knew exactly what to take."
G. Ross: "But we have traces of DNA evidence."
Blank: "I don't know. They didn't jerk off anywhere....they did leave footprints. We had an alarm system on order, but because of the rain, they didn't get a chance to get over here. We had most of the computer equipment delivered and set up but we didn't have the alarm. Whoever broke in knew that, and knew exactly what to take.
"The guy I hired is Glen Grimsley. I call him the unibomber. This guy is a genius. His work is magnificent. This guy is the best. That's why I decided to make the commitment. Anybody can buy equipment, but to find the right people is the tough part. I found the right guy. But they totally took all his programs, all his stuff that you can't put a pric
