Top Dealer of Pornography Disappears From Prison : Crime: Reuben Sturman, once a Van Nuys resident, vanishes from minimum-security facility where he was serving a 10-year sentence.

Reuben Sturman, once described by authorities as the world’s most successful pornographer and a man who for years frustrated repeated government attempts to put him in jail, has proven his reputation for wriggling out of the grasp of authorities was no fluke.

Sturman, 68, disappeared on Monday last week from the minimum security Federal Prison Camp, Boron, where he was serving a 10-year sentence for tax evasion, racketeering and shipping obscene material through the mail.

He was last seen at 4 p.m. Dec. 10, but was missing for a head count at 9 p.m. Sturman’s job at the prison was in the vehicle maintenance yard next to the dormitories and recreation field. Prison spokesman Jim Slade said none of the prison vehicles was taken, so Sturman may have walked a half-mile to U.S. 395, a major interstate highway, and met someone who drove him away.

Sturman’s wife, Naomi Delgado, a singer who still lives in the couple’s 5,610-square-foot house in Van Nuys, said through a spokesman that she has not heard from him.

“She’s very upset by it and it came as a total surprise,” attorney David Brown said of Sturman’s escape.

Some people familiar with the man’s once-vast holdings in the worldwide pornography business said he may be far away by now.

“Everybody is speculating he’s out of the country,” said a federal agent familiar with Sturman, who asked not to be identified. “With his unlimited funds and contacts throughout the world, he could be anywhere.”

Among the 200 bawdy bookstores he was once credited with controlling were several in England. He also secreted money in Swiss bank accounts. At his tax trial in Cleveland several years ago, the government presented testimony about the time he moved a back-breaking load of gold bars from one Swiss bank--part of $10 million believed hidden away in Switzerland--to another in a taxicab. The federal agent estimated Sturman’s wealth at well over $100 million.

Sturman’s rags-to-riches-to-racketeering story began on Cleveland’s east side, where he grew up the son of immigrant Russian Jews. Childhood friend Eugene Bayer remembered him as a “playful, serious kid who wanted to make money.”

The two friends went into the tobacco business together in the 1940s and by the ‘50s, Sturman had turned to selling what were then called girlie magazines.

Sturman kept a close eye on the bottom line and his businesses prospered. He set up regional distribution companies for the magazines in Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland and elsewhere. He went into the video business later and also opened a factory making sex paraphernalia in the Los Angeles area, vice authorities said. He began splitting his time between Cleveland and the West Coast several years ago, said friends and government officials.

Along the way, he was dogged by allegations that he was involved in organized crime, or at least paid the mob off to be let alone. A 1982 report to the governor of Ohio called him an associate of Terry Zappi, “a made member of the Gambino family.”

Sturman, an exercise fanatic and natty dresser who shopped at Bijan, a trendy clothier, and attended the Cannes film festivals each year, began to attract the attention of the government long ago. But unlike others in his business, who would agree to plea bargains for small fines when they were arrested, Sturman became a kind of hero in the business for resolving to battle each prosecution with every dollar he had.

He won every fight until the Internal Revenue Service came after him with proof that he had underpaid his taxes for the years 1978-82 by $2.47 million. Later, he pleaded guilty to obscenity and racketeering charges in Las Vegas and received a four-year sentence, running concurrently with the tax-evasion term, sources said.

Sturman was sent to the prison near Boron, located in the high desert. The prison houses white-collar criminals considered to be low flight risks, said a prison official.

The prosecution in the Las Vegas case obscenity case agreed to the placement since it was part of what they felt was a good plea bargain for the government. Along with agreeing to plead guilty, Sturman paid a $1-million fine on top of the $2.5 million he was assessed in the Cleveland case.

The agreement, however, ignored the fact that the U.S. Attorney’s office in Cleveland had said publicly in the past that they considered Sturman to be a flight risk. “When the guilty verdict came out in our case, we argued that he should be remanded to custody immediately,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Bernard Smith.

Sturman’s overseas holdings, along with the business and personal relationships he had developed abroad, made the prosecutors fearful that he might not choose to serve his full sentence. With good behavior, that sentence amounted to about seven years.

One federal official defended the decision to place him in a minimum-security prison, noting that he had never been convicted of a crime before and had made every one of his court appearances.

“Based on our evaluation and the recommendations from the court, we found he was suitable for this camp,” said Slade. Slade said he had never seen the warning from the Cleveland prosecutors.

Sturman began serving the sentence in June, but it was just a month ago that his last appeal asking for a sentence reduction was denied.

It now falls to the U.S. marshal’s office to find the escapee. The federal agent said he is confident Sturman will be found.

“He’s too high-profile, too well-known,” he said.