SAN FRANCISCO — Amanda Gullesserian, who performed in the industry under the name Phyllisha Anne and founded the now-defunct International Entertainment Adult Union (IEAU), has been sentenced to four months’ imprisonment for making a false statement in an IEAU federal financial report.
Industry news site Fleshbot was first to report on the sentencing.
On Dec. 12, a U.S. district court judge sentenced Gullesserian to four months’ imprisonment for knowingly understating the IEAU’s total receipts in the union’s labor organization annual report for 2020, filed with the Department of Labor.
The original indictment against Gullesserian also included embezzlement, but that charge was dropped in the course of reaching a plea agreement.
Gullesserian founded the IEAU in 2016, and until 2020 served variously as the group’s secretary and treasurer, according to IRS filings. The organization functioned for a period as the parent organization to the Adult Performance Artists Guild — then called the Adult Performers Actors Guild — until APAG branched out on its own in the wake of a 2020 conflict between the two groups.
That conflict arose after it was revealed that IEAU and Gullesserian were behind a controversial bill in the California state legislature, which would have imposed strict licensing requirements on sex workers, including adult performers. IEAU eventually issued an apology for backing the measure, which ultimately failed to pass.
At the time, APAG came out against the measure, standing in opposition to IEAU, of which APAG was then technically one chapter. Shortly thereafter, Gullesserian publicly announced that APAG had been “terminated.”
APAG codified its independent union status with the Department of Labor in 2021 and has continued to grow. IEAU stopped filing federal financial reports after 2020, and its former website no longer functions.
On Dec. 15, Gullesserian’s attorney filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, but the filing may be simply to keep the option for an appeal technically open for as long as possible, as actual grounds for appeal at this point remain unclear.
According to industry attorney Corey Silverstein, appeals filed after a guilty plea has been made are rarely granted.
“There would have to be some exceptional circumstances that would warrant the Court of Appeals to set aside the plea,” he told XBIZ.
