“We do not inspect secondary producers,” Special Agent Chuck Joyner told XBIZ. “On a few inspections, we determined the company was a primary producer for the majority of the products we reviewed. However, some of the products reviewed were produced by a separate company and the company inspected was the secondary producer or distributor. In those instances, we did not review any records for products determined to be produced by another company.”
Following the revelation that the FBI had inspected five Florida-based producers last month, some speculated that one or more of the producers inspected had been a secondary producer. This speculation was based in part on a paraphrasing of an unidentified producer who allegedly told the inspection team that he had not kept any records prior to 2005.
Joyner told XBIZ, however, that the FBI would not undertake any inspections of secondary producers until the revised regulations are in effect.
“Until any new regulations become law, they do not exist for our purposes,” Joyner said. “So, no, there will not be any inspections of secondary producers unless the law changes. Any proposed revisions are irrelevant until they become law.”
Asked what the most serious form of violation the FBI has documented to date was, Joyner said that one producer inspected “had absolutely no records for the products we reviewed.”
Joyner said that it was difficult to say which producer had exhibited the largest total number of violations to date, because that number “depends on how the Justice Department or the U.S. Attorney’s Office wants to categorize and charge violations.”
“Conceivably, every missing identification record could be considered a violation,” Joyner said. “Therefore, for example, if 200 performers were identified as engaging in sexually explicit conduct in 10 videos reviewed, it could be as many as 200 violations.”
Ultimately, Joyner said, it’s not up to the FBI to determine what and how many charges might stem from their inspections.
“The FBI conducts an inspection, very similar to an audit, and provides the results to the DOJ and USAO,” Joyner said. “Prosecutive decisions are made by those two entities.”
Joyner said that to date, 29 inspections have been conducted and 25 of the 29 producers inspected had violations of some kind.
“Of those 25, two were re-inspected and had unresolved violations,” Joyner said. “Five of the most recent inspections still require follow-up, but it is expected at least one of those will have unresolved violations.”
Joyner said that the remaining four producers inspected so far “were in complete compliance at the time of inspection.”
“Interestingly, the size of the companies in complete compliance ranged from one of the largest to one of the smallest in the industry,” Joyner said.
Joyner declined to provide specifics concerning the inspection team’s budget or the amount of money allocated annually for 2257 inspections, stating only that “at the present, budget constraints are not a factor in the frequency of inspections.”
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