Decorated Navy SEAL is moonlighting as a porn star

Navy Chief Special Warfare Officer Joseph John Schmidt III has been living dual lives.

As a member of the Navy SEALs, the 42-year-old boasts a chest of ribbons and medals during his 23 years in the military, including a valor citation for combat overseas. To his East County neighbors and Coronado shipmates, he’s been the married father who has given pep talks to special-needs children in Los Angeles and toured the country recruiting for the elite Naval Special Warfare teams, even serving as the face of the SEAL program on its website.

Schmidt is also Jay Voom, the actor in at least 29 porn flicks during the last seven years, including “Apple Smashing Lap Dance” and “Strippers Come Home Horny From the Club.”

He has spent most of his time in front of the camera engaging in sex with his wife — porn megastar Jewels Jade — for her website and film-distribution service. But he also has coupled with XXX actresses Mena Li and Ashden Wells, according to marketing materials found by the San Diego Union-Tribune and confirmed by Jade.

Schmidt declined to comment for this article.

The Coronado-based Naval Special Warfare Command has launched an investigation, and a commissioned officer has been assigned to handle the case.

Major questions include whether Schmidt violated rules mandating that SEALs obtain advance approval from their commanders for outside work and whether the SEAL brass has been quietly condoning his film work. The investigation began only eight months before Schmidt had planned to retire, and disciplinary action could affect his rank and pension benefits.

“We have initiated a formal investigation into these allegations. There are very clear regulations which govern outside employment by [Naval Special Warfare] personnel as well as prohibitions on behavior that is discrediting to the service,” said Capt. Jason Salata, a spokesman for the SEALs.

In an interview this week, Schmidt’s wife of 15 years claimed that many high-ranking SEALs have long known about her husband’s movies and seemed to tolerate his moonlighting. She also alleged that the SEALs invited her to the commandos’ Coronado campus to sign autographs for troops after she was named a 2011 Penthouse Pet of the Month.

Navy officials said Schmidt did not fill out mandatory paperwork to seek clearance from his chain of command for work as a porn actor. The command did grant formal permission for Schmidt to sell herbal supplements as a side business.

The armed forces’ rules for secondary employment have the force of a “punitive instruction,” which means violators can be tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for lack of compliance.

The military has a long history of punishing active-duty service members and even veterans who, for example, write unauthorized memoirs, take side jobs without permission or engage in work seen as detrimental to the military’s reputation.

Like other military branches, the Navy bans activities that prejudice “good order and discipline or that is service discrediting,” risk potential “press or public relations coverage” or “create an improper appearance.”

For instance: After she posed nude for Playboy in 2007, U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Michelle Manhart received a formal reprimand, was removed from her position as a training instructor and was demoted.

During a 1980 probe of seven servicewomen who appeared naked in Playboy, investigators also discovered that a male Marine major had posed in Playgirl. The armed forces punished the women with involuntarily discharges and gave the major a formal reprimand, allowing him to remain in the service.

SEALs also are barred from employment that discloses secret tactics and techniques, markets the SEAL’s active-duty status or involves a contractor doing business with the U.S. Department of Defense. Many high-profile SEAL misconduct cases have fallen into these categories.

In 2012, for example, the Navy formally reprimanded members of SEAL Team Six for helping Electronic Arts design the video game “Medal of Honor: Warfighter.”

Similar non-disclosure rules extend into a SEAL’s retired years. In 2014, former SEAL Matt Bissonnette was forced to repay the federal government $4.5 million for writing an unauthorized, first-hand account of the slaying of terrorism mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Schmidt’s unlikely entry into the skin trade turns on a very different kind of moonlighting gig he took while serving as a SEAL in Virginia.

He and his wife founded the Norfolk-based real estate company Schmidt and Wolf Associates in 2005, according to Virginia state documents. Within two years, losses at multiple rental properties created nearly $1.8 million in personal debt, according to the couple’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing.

Three properties had both first and second mortgages, and bankruptcy records show the pair had resorted to using credit cards to finance loan repayments. Schmidt’s Navy pay was less than $60,000 per year at the time, according to the federal filing.

Jade appeared in dozens of porn films after her 2001 debut in “Escape to Sex Island,” but she had left the industry by 2003 to become a wife and mother, attend school for her nursing degree and run the real estate firm.

As business losses deepened, she became a stripper to make ends meet, logging long weeks in Las Vegas and sending money home. Then she reluctantly returned to making sex films for the cash, she said.

“It’s helped our family. It got us out of a lot of financial issues we were going through,” Jade said. “I could take care of the child. I could try to get us out of financial debt.”

When the family rotated to Coronado in early 2009 for her husband’s military service, she stayed in the porn business. Jade said it wasn’t by choice. She discovered that once a woman becomes a name in the porn video and Internet trade, with millions of fans worldwide, she’s spotted nearly everywhere she goes.“

Once you’re recognized and you build a brand and you’ve got your fans who know who you are, when you go to try to find a job, you can’t get another job,” she said.

Jade said she tried to get a management job at a luxury hotel in San Diego last year. Before she finished her employment interview, a fan recognized her, the gossip quickly spread through that office and she realized she couldn’t work there.

She’s currently ranked 79th globally for brand recognition by FreeOnes, a website often used by porn directors to book stars based on their popularity. To maintain that level of stardom in the industry, she said actresses need certain side ventures to lend credibility to their personal brand and to give fans a way to follow their careers. So she launched a website and a pair of online film-distribution lines that she said are loss-leaders, driving Internet traffic but rarely turning a profit.

To reduce the cost of running these side businesses, she and other porn actors rely on “content trade” — donating time to one another’s self-made films. To further cut expenses, Jade said she recruited her husband to help out as an unpaid performer.

She alleges that many of his fellow SEALs watched the videos online.

“They knew about it at work,” Jade said. “He got called in and they said, ‘Look, keep it on the low, don’t mention the SEAL name and blah, blah, blah.’“

“He was always pretty open about it with the command. I mean, honestly, all of his buddies knew about it. Everybody knew about it,” she said.

The Navy hasn’t set a deadline for when the investigation is expected to wrap up.

carl.prine@sduniontribune.com

Carl Prine writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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