Reuben Sturman
Reuben Sturman (1924-1997) was an American pornographer and businessman from Ohio. Though unknown to most Americans, Sturman ran one of the most successful pornography operations in US history. Time Magazine estimated that Sturman was making around $300 million per year in 1991.
Sturman, the son of immigrant Russian Jews, grew up on Cleveland's East Side. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War II and then went on to study at Case Western Reserve University, graduating in 1948, before starting his own business selling comic books from his car. By the late 1950s, his business had swelled to a major wholesale magazine company with affiliates in several American cities. During the 1960s Sturman started selling magazines with sexual content, a product he discovered could make profits that outmatched anything that could be achieved by selling any kind of comic book. By the late 1960s, Sturman was the biggest distributor of adult magazines in the US.
The first problems with the authorities started in 1964, when FBI agents raided a Cleveland warehouse, confiscating copies of a magazine entitled Sex Life of a Cop. This was the start of over two decades of legal difficulties. Though his operations were raided and large volumes of magazines were confiscated on numerous occasions, Sturman managed to avoid prosecution by counter-suits, shady business practices, and by using at least 20 different aliases to protect his identity. Sturman became increasingly involved in semi-legal or all-out criminal activities during this time and had connections with the Gambino crime family.
The American journalist and writer Eric Schlosser described Sturman in a US News article in 1997:
- To his defenders in the sex industry, Sturman was a marketing genius and a champion of free speech, an entrepreneur whose toughness, intelligence, and boundless self-confidence were responsible for his successes. But to anti-porn activists and Justice Department officials, Sturman was the head of a vast criminal organization whose companies enjoyed an unfair competitive advantage: protection and support from the highest levels of the Cosa Nostra.
It was Sturman's refusal to pay any form of tax that finally brought him down. In 1989, Sturman was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to 10 years in jail and $2.5 million in fines. Another charge, this time for the interstate transportation of obscene material, resulted in a plea bargain for Sturman, but he was later caught trying to bribe a juror and was sentenced to 19 additional years for extortion. He briefly escaped prison in Boron, California, but was again apprehended in Anaheim. He died in a Kentucky federal prison in 1997.
Doc Johnson
The adult toy company Sturman started was named in mocking tribute to then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, whose justice department repeatedly attempted to prosecute Sturman for obscenity. Today, some of the companies best-known products are the Pocket Rocket, Joy Jelly and Motion Lotion. Their Japanese-style vibrator named the iVibe Rabbit is incredibly popular.
US News and World Report
Rueben Sturman: Born in 1924, the godfather of porn, Reuben Sturman, grew up in Cleveland's East Side, the ambitious eldest son of immigrant Russian Jews who ran a grocery store. The future leader of "Kosher Nostra" served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, then attended Western Reserve University before marrying and starting his own business. Using his home as a garage, Reuben drove through Cleveland, visiting candy stores and selling comic books from the trunk of his old Dodge. His business grew by the late '50s into a wholesale magazine company with warehouses in eight cities.
At the suggestion of an employee, the company began to sell sex magazines. Once Sturman realized they produced 20 times the revenue of comic books, he wanted to stock every such publication printed. He eventually produced his own nude periodicals and opened retail stores. In the mid-1960s, Sturman came financially to the aid of Lenny Burtman, eventually becoming his main distributor. By the end of the 1960s, Sturman ranked at the top of adult magazine distributors.
By the mid-'70s, Rueben Sturman owned over 200 adult bookstores supplied by regional distribution companies with regal names such as Royal News in Detroit, Noble News in Baltimore, and the flagship Sovereign News in Cleveland. Though not as well known as Playboy's Hugh Hefner, Hustler's Larry Flynt, and Penthouse's Bob Guccione, Sturman dominated porn more than Bill Gates dominates computers. One competitor complained that the Jewish wiseguy did not simply control the adult-entertainment industry; he was the industry.
To guard his privacy, Rueben Sturman used at least 20 different aliases, avoided the news media, and frequently hid his face behind a mask during court appearances. "To his defenders in the sex industry, Sturman was a marketing genius and a champion of free speech, an entrepreneur whose toughness, intelligence, and boundless self-confidence were responsible for his successes. But to anti-porn activists and Justice Department officials, Sturman was the head of a vast criminal organization whose companies enjoyed an unfair competitive advantage: protection and support from the highest levels of the Cosa Nostra." (Eric Schlosser in the US News & World Report 2/10/97)
In his list of Jewish film pornographers, Luke Ford ascribes to Reuben Sturman the nomer "godfather of porn," noting that "although not as well known as Playboy's Hugh Hefner, Hustler's Larry Flynt, and Penthouse's Bob Guccione, Sturman exerted far greater influence. One competitor complained that Sturman did not control the adult entertainment industry; he was the industry." Sturman himself told the Los Angeles Times that "No one was anywhere near me [in the pornography business]." "To expand his hold on the [pornography] industry," noted the Times, "he produced films with one company, sex paraphernalia with another and then sold everything through his own stores." By 1977 an FBI report declared that Sturman had accomplished "an almost total takeover" of the "peep-show industry." The San Diego Union-Tribune noted in 1991 that "in its 1986 report, the [U.S. government] Meese Commission on Pornography singled out Sturman as the administration's top porn target. It identified him as the number one worldwide distributor of pornography, with financial control of nearly 200 businesses in 19 states, one Canadian province, and six foreign countries." (Ford cites figures of 800 Sturman adult bookstores in all American states and forty other countries.)
The pornography industry supplies customers with a remarkable range of goods and services, which range from hard-core books, magazines, films, and videotapes, to various devices designed to be used in conjunction with sexual activity, to live and interactive encounters in "rap booths" and "live peep shows." The actual size of the industry is difficult, if not impossible, to measure. On the surface, it would appear that any business offering such a large flow of hard cash, little competition from "respectable" businesses, and a clandestine environment would inevitably attract organized crime. Just exactly what form organized crime's interests take in the pornography industry is the source of considerable controversy. For example, investigative journalist Jack Anderson has reported that "... the pornography industry is controlled by organized crime. Phony names and dummy corporations are used, but behind them are the crime bosses" Convicted child pornographer, Guy Strait, told interviewers that the pornography industry is controlled by "the syndicate," a nationwide cartel which specializes in pornography and narcotics.
The fact is that any cash business is susceptible to organized crime influences. Pornographic bookstores offer the opportunity to skim money off the top, thereby increasing profits and decreasing tax liability. . In Pennsylvania, research showed that some pornography outlets instructed their managers to turn off their electronic cash registers during certain times of the day so that their records would not reflect their real sales income In other cases where retail establishments were owned by individuals with interests in other illicit enterprises, such as gambling or loansharking, the retail sales figures were artificially inflated so that profits from these illegal activities could be laundered through the store. In some major cities, motorcycle gangs have made a major move into the commercial sex industry. In Philadelphia, for example, the Pagans motorcycle club has been involved in retail pornography, the production of pornographic films, and the provision of other sexual services, including prostitution services connected to live peep shows and rap booth operations in porn stores (Potter and Jenkins, 1985; Pennsylvania Crime Commission, 1980). A confidential 1978 FBI report on pornography said that:
Organized crime involvement in pornography, as evidenced by this survey, is indeed significant and there is an obvious national control directly and indirectly by organized crime figures of that industry in the United States. Few pornographers can operate independently without some involvement with organized crime (Potter, 1986: 24).
The FBI report went on to detail a series of extortionate tactics prevalent in the illegal porn industry:
A "requirement" that film producers distribute through organized crime controlled companies under threat of piracy;
Burglaries of independent retail outlets;
Strong-arm tactics against theater owners screening pirated versions of organized crime controlled films (Potter, 1986: 24-25).
The shadowy outlines of a syndicate in the pornography industry similar to the one described by Guy Strait was uncovered in the FBI's 1980 MIPORN operation. MIPORN ("Miami Pornography") was an undercover investigation of the pornography industry, which resulted in the indictments of 55 people in 10 states. Among the key actors indicted in MIPORN were the following: Theodore Rothstein and Robert DiBernardo, both of Star Distributors, Ltd. of New York, one of the largest hardcore film, videotape, book, and magazine distributors in the country; Kenneth Guarino of Providence, Rhode Island, the operator of Superior News, Inc. and the largest pornography distributor in New England; Mickey Zaffarano of New York, considered to be a major distributor of adult motion pictures, with interests in retail pornography operations in Washington, D.C., Boston, and San Francisco; Reuben Sturman of Cleveland, Ohio, owner of Sovereign News Company, who was known as the "King of Porn." Sturman was the largest pornography distributor in the United States and owned or controlled hundreds of retail and wholesale outlets across the country. He also had an extensive production and distribution operation in Europe.
Of the individuals indicted by the federal government in the MIPORN operation, Reuben Sturman was clearly the most important. Sturman presided over his business enterprises from his Sovereign News Company, headquartered in Cleveland. Sovereign News was housed in a three-story, red-brick building, surrounded by chain-link fences and barbed wire and protected by the most modern and sophisticated electronic surveillance devices money can buy. Sturman controlled pornography distribution warehouses in Baltimore, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Denver, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Toronto, Los Angeles, and Detroit. In addition, he was the principal owner of between 300 and 800 retail pornography stores around the country. Sturman's Sovereign News Empire dominated the pornography industry and created an environment in which smaller operators and their distributors were dependent upon Sovereign News for their survival. A confidential FBI memorandum on the pornography industry said that 'Sturman's business practices' have included the strong-arm shakedowns of other dealers, distributors, and suppliers throughout the United States, particularly on the West Coast. Sturman accomplished a total takeover with the assistance of Robert DiBernardo (Potter, 1986: 136)
Sturman was eventually worth an estimated $100 million. His main company, Sovereign News, noted the Los Angeles Times, was "based in a sprawling Cleveland warehouse which is cynically referred to by some lawmen as the Ft. Knox of pornography." Sturman, son of Jewish Russian immigrants, depicted himself as a free-speech crusader and evaded the law for most of his life. (Omnipresent Alan Dershowitz once defended his deeds, declaring that "the worst thing [Sturman] did was to turn feminists into censors." ) The "Godfather of Porn" was finally sent to prison in 1992 for income tax evasion and interstate transportation of films that depicted "humans eating excrement, women having sex with horses, pigs, chickens, and other animals, and acts of sadomasochism." Ralph Levine, a former Sturman partner in a Las Vegas porno bookshop called Talk of the Town, (described by one newspaper as "a gaudy smut emporium on the eastern fringes of downtown Las Vegas") became a key government witness against him. Another Jewish co-defendant in the case, Stanley Loeb, "pleaded guilty to interstate transportation of obscene materials."
Reuben Sturman, who at one point was the world's largest distributor of pornography, reputedly earning in the neighborhood of $1 million per day, was finally convicted on income tax evasion charges in 1989 in Cleveland. Subsequently, he was convicted for obscenity distribution and racketeering in Las Vegas federal court; arrested for escape and possession of a firearm after he walked away from a minimum-security prison in California and was recaptured; convicted of extortion in federal court in Chicago after he paid four men to do criminal damage with pipe bombs to several sex businesses in Chicago, Phoenix and other cities; and convicted in federal court in Cleveland for witness and jury tampering.
Sturman was convicted in 1992. Another Jewish associate, Herbert Fineberg, was also convicted for the attempted murder of another porn shop owner. Another member of the porno chain, Allan Goelman, was convicted of income tax evasion of $270,000 in personal profits as head of Sturman's "U.S. retail operations." "I was a businessman," said Sturman once imprisoned, blandly explaining his activities, "I didn't see pornography as good. I didn't see it as bad. It was a product to be sold."
Rueben Sturman died in prison in 1997.
(Eric Schlosser - US News & World Report 2/10/97)
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