Sex-Film Maker Pleads Guilty to Tax Evasion

One of the San Fernando Valley’s most financially successful sex-film makers has pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion in connection with a scheme to skim money from his Indiana mail-order video business.

Mark Carriere, also known as Mark Curtis, 36, pleaded guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana to filing a false tax return for 1987, when he said his income was $767,687.

As part of a plea bargain, Carriere admitted that his income was “substantially greater than that.”

In return for the guilty plea, the government agreed to drop six other counts of tax evasion stemming from an Internal Revenue Service investigation of Carriere’s tax returns for 1986-88. In 1989, federal agents raided the Indiana mail-order business, Multi-Media Distributing Co., and seized four safes containing more than $548,000 in cash.

Sentencing of Carriere is scheduled for Oct. 31. Under the plea bargain, he could receive a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000. He has also agreed to repay back taxes. For 1987, the amount owed is $246,865. Altogether, according to one federal official’s estimate, Carriere could be required to pay the government $750,000 to resolve the charges.

Carriere started his mail-order company in 1980. He later moved to the San Fernando Valley and opened Video Exclusives, a company that made X-rated videos for his mail-order house. Carriere developed a reputation as the Mack Sennett of adult entertainment, churning out dozens of low-budget features every year.

He opened a 7,500-square-foot sound stage in a West Valley warehouse to produce nothing but adult videos.

While the rest of the industry fell on hard financial times because of a glut of videos on the market, Carriere, in an interview last year, said his sales figures rose from $3 million less than a decade ago to $30 million in 1990. He amassed a collection of exotic cars, including a Bentley, a Porsche Carrera, a classic Corvette and a Ferrari Testarossa.

Carriere came to the attention of the government in 1989, according to the indictment, when the IRS was told that Carriere and his brother, Brad, who later committed suicide, “were involved in skimming large sums of cash from the business” in Indiana.

According to government prosecutors, two sets of books were kept. The indictment said cash sent in by customers ordering tapes was separated from checks and money orders. The cash was then placed in four safes at Multi-Media and not reported to the government.

In October, 1989, federal agents raided the business and hauled away those safes, with the more than $500,000 inside.

Carriere’s attorney, Harold Fahringer of New York, said his client agreed to plead guilty because he felt that the plea agreement worked out with the government was fair. Although Carriere could receive a five-year sentence, Fahringer said he hopes that it will be much less, possibly no more than eight months.

“We think it’s an extremely good disposition,” Fahringer said.

In court papers, Carriere acknowledged that he is also the target of a Florida grand jury investigation of the distribution of obscene materials. That investigation is part of an ongoing nationwide crackdown on distributors of pornography.

Carriere said he hopes to resolve that case by pleading to one count of distributing an obscene videotape.