SALT LAKE CITY, UT — The price of doing mail order business with customers residing in Utah just went up, thanks to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Salt Lake City. Although details are still minimal, mainstream news sources report that the owners of Movies by Mail have been charged with obscenity after shipping Max Hardcore and Extreme Associates videos into the state.Located in Cleveland, OH, brothers Sam and Michael Harb are each charged with one count of sending obscene material into Utah. With a federal court date scheduled in Utah for June 29th the 42-year-old and 33-year-old siblings face the possibility of as many as five years in prison if convicted.
According to U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman, the titles in question are violent and devoid of artistic merit, proven in part by the fact that they are “not the material you can order from your hotel room,” he explained during the Thursday unsealing of the criminal complaint, which was filed on June 8th.
“None of these three films has a plot line” an FBI statement concerning the charge points out, further pointing out that “The films consist entirely of scenes of hard-core sexual acts being performed by multiple men and women.”
The titles in question are Max Hardcore: Pure Max 18, Max Hardcore: Extreme 12, and Extreme Associates: Cocktails 5 and were ordered online from Movies by Mail as part of an investigation begun by the FBI’s Adult Obscenity Task Force last year after a tip to the Washington, D.C. office. The video were ordered in March by a Salt Lake City agent, who concluded that they were obscene due to a presumably exhaustive education on the subject.
The Salt Lake Tribune states that Movies by Mail is believed to have sent at least 683 packages to Utah during 2006, with 149 of those arriving in Salt Lake City. The Department of Justice joins the U.S Attorney’s Office in both Salt Lake City and Cleveland, as well as the U.S. Postal Service. The charges come after national media attention brought to light the fact that seven U.S. Attorneys have been sacked by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for neglecting to be as vigorous about obscenity prosecutions as the White House would prefer. Gonzales ha stated that U.S. Attorneys “serve at the pleasure of the president” in spite of actual performance and having been approved by the U.S. Senate.
Although there is no evidence that any Movies by Mail packages wound up in the possession of minors, Tolman moralized that “As obscene materials continue to proliferate they have become more accessible to the young and innocent among us.”
