Mail-Order Operator Pleads Guilty to Obscenity Violations

The president of a Yorba Linda mail-order business has pleaded guilty to two counts of violating federal obscenity laws.

With the Tuesday plea in U.S. District Court, LeJay Winkler, doing business as Universal Products, became the first major figure among many targets to be indicted nationally in a recent federal pornography probe.

Winkler pleaded guilty to mailing an advertisement containing sexually oriented material to a woman after she had filed a form with postal authorities that was supposed to insure that no such material be sent to her.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Lambert said the woman had received a similar advertisement from Winkler’s company earlier, prompting her to put her name on the postal list.

Mailing of sexually oriented material that is not in itself obscene is not illegal unless the person has requested not to receive it.

After that incident, a postal inspector obtained a post office box and ordered the type of material from Winkler which legally has been determined to be obscene. The mailing of a video, called “Black Workout Two,” and three magazines was the basis for the second charge.

Winkler’s lawyer, Herschel Bullen, said he had not looked at the video, but the magazines “appear to be patently offensive and hard-core obscenity.”

Lambert said the video had almost no story line and was a succession of homosexual acts.

U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Greene accepted the guilty pleas and set sentencing for Sept. 14 at 8:30 a.m.

Lambert described Winkler’s business as practically “a one-man organization; he’s involved some of his family members in it.”

Winkler told Greene that he has received letters from members of the public thanking him for helping to save their marriages.