Joe Francis, the sleazy video producer who made millions of dollars offering free T-shirts and beads to drunken young women to flash their breasts and other body parts for "Girls Gone Wild" videos, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to a report from UPI.com on March 1. Allegedly, some of the young women in the "Girls Gone Wild" videos were often underage.
Court documents show that the Girls Gone Wild Brands owes $16 million in disputed claims. $10 million is owed to Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn following a defamation suit, as well as $5.8 million awarded to Tamara Favazzo after having her shirt was pulled down by an employee of “Girls Gone Wild” and the footage was used without her permission in “Girls Gone Wild Sorority Orgy 2.”
Wynn took Francis to court in 2009 when Joe Francis reportedly refused to pay $2 million in gambling debt owed at Wynn’s Las Vegas casino. During one of the hearings, Francis accused Wynn of threatening to kill him.
“Wynn threatened to kill me. He said he would hit me in the back of the head with a shovel and bury me in a hole in the desert.”
Wynn sued Francis for defamation, winning $10 million, after Quincy Jones testified against Joe Francis’ claims of emails containing Wynn’s threats. The jury originally awarded Wynn $40 million, cut the judgment was later reduced to $20 million by the judge.
A spokesperson for Girls Gone Wild Brands claims, “Girls Gone Wild remains strong as a company and strong financially.”
Those who had hoped that Joe Francis’ filing for bankruptcy would mean the end of the “sleazy video empire,” but the company says that the bankruptcy filing is an effort to “restructure its legal affairs.” Joe Francis no longer owns the company, but the judgments still are at least one of the company’s major debts.
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