Video Porn Distributor Gets 1-Year Sentence
A Woodland Hills video distributor was sentenced to a year in prison Monday for selling videotapes of teen-age porn actress Traci Lords in violation of child pornography laws.
U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon sentenced Rubin Gottesman, 56, to an additional term of three years’ probation and fined his company, X-Citement Video, $100,000.
Kenyon, saying he would not succumb to a “kind of hangman’s mob psychology” from those urging a harsh sentence, agreed with the federal prosecutor’s request for a one-year term.
Gottesman and his Van Nuys company were each convicted in June of three counts of interstate transportation of child pornography. Nine Lords films were identified among those sold to undercover investigators.
In a brief plea to the judge Monday, Gottesman said, “Please don’t send me to jail.” Defense attorney Stanley Fleishman said he will appeal the conviction and sentence.
Gottesman became the first person in Southern California prosecuted for obscenity under federal racketeering laws when he was indicted in April, 1988. He was ordered to begin serving his sentence Nov. 27.
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