3 Years Probation for Torture Portal Operator

NEWARK, N.J. — Torture Portal operator Barry Goldman will receive three years probation as part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors over obscenity charges, XBIZ has learned.

Goldman also will be required to wear a location-monitoring device for six months and be forced to disclose all business involvement during his probation.

He also was ordered to pay a court assessment fee of $100 and will forfeit all copies of “Torture of a Porn Store Girl,” “Defiant Crista Submits” and “Pregnant and Willing.”

In addition, as part of the deal with prosecutors, Goldman agreed to not contribute to the operation of TorturePortal.com and MastersOfPain.com

Goldman's plea deal, signed off by U.S. District Judge Dennis Cavanaugh in Newark, spares him a trial where he could have received up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. His plea deal included one count under violating 18 U.S.C. § 1461 for mailing obscene material.

Goldman was indicted by a federal grand jury for the distribution of “Torture of a Porn Store Girl,” “Defiant Crista Submits” and “Pregnant and Willing” through the mail. The videos all were mailed in 2006 and 2007.

The Justice Department first learned of Goldman, 60, when he promoted his companies' movies at a Las Vegas adult industry convention in January 2006. The movies were sold through the web at TorturePortal.com.

The case has been mired in legal controversy after Goldman was indicted by a federal grand jury in New Jersey after a previous indictment was dropped in Montana.

Goldman attorneys Lisa M. Mack and Louise Arkel — both federal public defenders — in previous briefs to the court argued that the Justice Department handled his investigation in a “heavy-handed and inexplicable” pattern and that its beginnings were "the result of a deliberate and intentional search for the most favorable forum possible.”

Further, Goldman’s attorneys said that the Justice Department probe was done “in contravention of DOJ policy, both with respect to venue and to prosecutorial targets” because the government went against its own rules over picking on smaller adult distributors as opposed to larger fish and that it was inconsistent over choosing prosecutorial forums.

“It meant dragging a retired man in poor health and with extremely limited resources halfway across the country to answer for having allegedly mailed three movies, placing him under strict court supervision and placing him under media and community scrutiny, until a federal judge refused to play the government’s game and transferred the case to New Jersey,” Goldman’s counsel said in a motion last year.

Federal prosecutors Bonnie Hannon and Pamela Satterfield of the government's now-broken up Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, were involved in the Goldman prosecution.

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