Opinion ID: 786706
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Investigation of Bizarre Video

Text: 8 Sometime prior to October 1990, Jimmy Whitaker, a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), entered a video store in Tallahassee, Florida. Whitaker was conducting an investigation into possible violations of the federal obscenity laws. During the search, Whitaker discovered a collection of obscene videos that had been shipped to the store by Multi-Media Distributing Co., Inc. (Multi-Media), Carriere's Indiana company. As a result of the seizure of those videos, and after some further investigation, a search warrant was executed in October 1990 at Multi-Media's Indiana offices. Among other things, $548,000 in cash was seized from a safe. 9 After that search, Special Agent Matthew Pellegrino, who had taken over responsibility for the investigation from Agent Whitaker, received (in an undercover capacity) a catalogue from a Multi-Media-related company that offered obscene videos for sale. The catalogue stated that the videos were distributed by Bizarre Video. These events led to a second search of Multi-Media's offices, in July 1991. This search revealed, among other things, that Carriere was doing business with a New York company named Bizarre Video/Bean Blossom (Bizarre). Specifically, labels and invoices seized during the searches revealed that Bizarre had supplied obscene videos to Carriere and Multi-Media. On some of the invoices, the preprinted name Star had been crossed out, and the name Bizarre was written by hand. The investigators then turned their attention to identifying the owners and principals of Bizarre. 10 Rothstein was the owner of Star Distributors (Star), a pornography business located at 20-40 Jay Street, Brooklyn, New York. Star's offices were on the same floor of the same building as the offices of Bizarre, and both companies used the same space to store videos and shipping labels. On July 23, 1992, the investigators obtained a warrant to search the offices of both Star and Bizarre. During the search of the adjacent offices, Morton Gordon told the agents that he was the president and sole owner of Bizarre, and Nathan Grama identified himself as the president of Star.