Thomas W. Lambert was arraigned in March 2004 for selling and shipping rape and sodomy videotapes via a catalog business. He pleaded guilty one year later.
Lambert and his partner, Sanford Wasserman, allegedly grossed more than $400,000 selling videos titled "Physically Raped,'' "Anything Goes'' and "Rape and Sodomize."
The tapes reportedly depicted violent gang rape scenes, sexual intercourse between humans and animals and other sexual activity that involved urination, defecation, fisting, bondage and sadistic and masochistic conduct.
Along with Lambert's sentence, handed down this week by U.S. District Judge Richard F. Cebull, he was ordered to pay a fine of $35,000. After his sentence is met, Lambert will be under supervised release for three years.
Lambert and Wasserman ran their business from 1998 to 2002 under several bogus company names, including Pet Tec, the PT Co., Digital Technology, New Technology and Brightstar.
They both faced one conspiracy count, six counts of transportation of obscene materials, one money-laundering count and a forfeiture count.
Wasserman is scheduled to be sentenced on June 16.
According to the Department of Justice, at the time the two men were arraigned, their customer base was spread out nationwide, and tapes were sent through Federal Express and the U.S. Postal Service.
The investigation was a cooperative effort between the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Montana.
