While O.J. Simpson is probably headed to the golf course today after three days in jail and hopping the first flight out of Nevada last night, Joe Francis -- waiting to face trial on tax evasion charges -- is still cooling his heels in a jail near Reno, with no end to his incarceration in sight. Yes, he's still there.
To help bring his plight to light, Francis has launched MeetJoeFrancis.com -- from inside the clink -- and it's launching today. He tells the long and sordid story of his legal woes -- ten long pages of it -- and even claims that he signed a settlement in his cell (above) with seven women who had filed suit against him for filming them while they were minors. He signed "under duress" from a judge he believed would set him free for doing so. Not true.
Elsewhere, the "Girls Gone Wild" founder tries to set the record straight on the charge that he flashed a Benjamin to bribe a prison guard to get him a bottle of water. Francis says that he was just giving the guard money to go down to the commissary so he could take his cholesterol and sleep meds, but that it got blown out of proportion too.
There is a legal reason that Francis is stuck in jail -- if he steps foot outside the Washoe County Detention Center, he'll be picked up by marshals and shipped back to Florida for more jail time, because, unlike OJ, his bail has not been granted.
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Kaitlin
FREE JOE !! FREE JOE !! FREE JOE !!!
Joe!!!!!
Why is Joe still in jail
Coco Arquette
the bastard had sex with several underaged girls. he deserves to rot in hell or at least jail
cubalibre
Joe Francis is in jail for a contempt charge stemming from his refusal to comply with the court-order in the main civil case, not the civil case itself. But what's not being said is that this slimebag is sitting in jail in Nevada ON PURPOSE, so he won't have to be extradited back to Florida to face the more serious sexual suit/charges against him there. He's not a murderer, but he's a nasty piece of work no matter how you slice it. He's based his entire empire on exploiting young, stupid drunk girls-- not illegal, but hardly honorable. Let the douchebag rot in obscurity, I say.
gh
I can believe this story
Alex
Joe Francis is my hero!
gh
1st!!!!! Joe Rules!!!!!!!!! Let him out!!
duh
why are there no criminal charges for making pornographic tapes of minors anyway? that's what he should be in jail for, not on the civil case..
me
Read this LA Times article and you know what kind of a bastard Joe Francis is. He should never walk free again.
excerpt LA Times:
"Szyszka tells me later that as she was spinning around the strip pole that night, Francis appeared, grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him. 'You are so going on the bus later,' she recalls Francis saying. "I was like, 'Um, OK.' I was shocked. I was like, 'WhoaâJoe's, like, trying to talk to me, like out of all the girls in here.'" Francis invited her back to the VIP area to do shots with him, she says, and she said yes.
Szyszka says the more shots she drank, the cloudier her judgment became. She says she agreed to join Francis and his crew on the "Girls Gone Wild" bus. "I thought 'Girls Gone Wild' was like flashing, and I thought I would flash them and be done. And so when I'm walking to the bus, that's all I'm thinking is going to happen."
At first she felt comfortable, she says. Inebriated and excited, she says she was led to the back of the bus, to a small bedroom. The double bed, with its neatly folded iridescent purple sheets, takes up most of the room. A flat-screen TV faces the bed, and cabinets are filled with remote controls, lubricants, condoms, sex toys in plastic bags, baby oil, a DVD called 'How to be a Player' and a clipboard full of waivers for girls to sign. A small bathroom is off to the side, with a half-sized shower with faux marble tiling, and on the floor of the shower is a crate holding cheap and fruity-flavored rum, whiskey, tequila and Kool-Aid.
Footage from that night shows a close-up of Szyszka's driver's license, proving she's not a minor. The camera then captures Szyszka lying on the bed. Her nails are chipped, her eyes coated with makeup. Following a camerman's instructions, she shows her breasts and says, 'Girls Gone Wild.' She seems shy but willing. She smiles. The unseen cameraman asks her to take off her shirt, her skirt, then her underwear. She sprawls on the bed, her legs open. At his suggestion, she masturbates with a dildo, saying repeatedly that it hurts but also feels good. Francis enters the room at certain points and you hear his voice, low and flirtatious, telling her, 'You are so adorable.' When she says she's a virgin, he responds: 'Great. You won't be after my cameraman gets done with you.'
When I talk to Szyszka seven days later, she says she "didn't quite realize" she was being filmed. 'But I didn't care because I was drunk and who cares?# Then she adds: 'It didn't feel good to me at all, but I was totally faking it because I was on 'Girls Gone Wild.''
Eventually, Szyszka says, Francis told the cameraman to leave and pushed her back on the bed, undid his jeans and climbed on top of her. 'I told him it hurt, and he kept doing it. And I keep telling him it hurts. I said, 'No' twice in the beginning, and during I started saying, 'Oh, my god, it hurts.' I kept telling him it hurt, but he kept going, and he said he was sorry but kissed me so I wouldn't keep talking."
Afterward, she says, Francis cleaned them both off with a paper towel and told her to get dressed. Then, she says, he opened the door and told the cameraman to come back, saying, 'She's not a virgin anymore.'
Szyszka says Francis told her that what happened had to stay between them. She says she agreed, and they walked to the front of the bus. Szyszka remembers that one of the crew returned her driver's license. * Another asked if she wanted to hang out on the bus. She declined, she says, but asked for three pairs of 'booty short' underwear that Francis had promised her for appearing on camera. 'They gave me a weird look like that was too much,' Szyszka recalls. 'They were, like, 'Three of them?' and I was, like, 'Yeah, three.''
Within days, Szyszka says, she told her father, who was angry about what she said had happened but kept quiet at her request. A month after the incident, she says, she told her sister and mother.
She's confused, she admits, about what happened. She feels guilty, she says, for getting herself into the situation in the first place. She says she never would have undressed for the cameras if she hadn't been completely drunk. And she is adamant that she said "no" to Francis. She says she's haunted by that night.
'I feel like it was planned,' she says. 'Sometimes I'm driving along, and I think about it and all of a sudden feel weird.'
Six weeks after that night outside Chicago, when I call Francis on his cellphone and ask him about the incident, he says he doesn't remember Szyszka and that he didn't have sex with anyone that night. He seems to lose control, repeatedly referring to me by a crude word for female genitalia. 'If you print that, I will [expletive] sue the [expletive] out of you. If you print that, baby, you just put the nail in your own coffin,' he tells me. 'You are a [exp
me
You people who post here and call a criminal your "hero" seem to have lost the plot. Investigate this matter, read quality papers... and you'll find out what this man has done!
Everybody who calls Joe Francis a "hero" and types "free him" without having investigated the case better should keep his mouth shut! You're supporting a criminal.
jim
LET ME GET THIS RIGHT, O.J, R-KELLY, BOTH OUT OF JAIL AND STEVE FRANCIS STILL LOCKED UP ......................Explain that to me.
gh
Girls Gone Wild came to my campus once and it was awesome, i see nothing wrong with Joe
Standards are badly needed.
O.J.'s out because he goes after his own posessions, not under-age girls.
gh
Joe is a hero, i saw him save a puppy once, it was amazing
neo
what a sick b%%%tard.. He can rot in jail for all I care.