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FEDERAL GRAND JURY IN SALT LAKE CITY CHARGES
CLEVELAND MEN WITH OBSCENITY VIOLATIONS
WASHINGTON – Two
Cleveland men have been charged by a federal grand jury in Salt Lake
City with operating an obscenity distribution business and related
offenses, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal
Division and U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman of the District of Utah announced
today.
The indictment returned today charges
Cleveland residents Sami R. Harb and Michael Harb, doing business as Movies by
Mail, with three counts of engaging in a business of selling or transferring
obscene DVDs, and three counts of using the mails to deliver obscene DVDs. If
convicted, the defendants face a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each
count. A summons was issued ordering the defendants to appear for arraignment
on July 12 in Salt Lake City before U.S. Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells.
The indictment supersedes
a complaint filed in federal court in Salt Lake City on June 8, 2007, and unsealed
on June 14 following a search of the Harbs’ offices and warehouse in Cleveland.
According
to the indictment and other court documents, DVDs containing three
films entitled “MaxHardcore, Pure
Max 18,” “MaxHardcore, Extreme 12,” and “Extreme Associates,
Cocktails 5,” were ordered from a Web site operated by the Harbs and mailed
to an address in Salt Lake City as part of an FBI undercover investigation. The
indictment alleges that these films are obscene. Court documents
disclose that Movies by Mail delivered 683 packages to addresses in the
state of Utah during 2006; 149 of them to addresses in Salt Lake City.
The case is being prosecuted
by Assistant U.S. Attorney Karin Fojtik of the District of Utah and Trial
Attorney Kenneth Whitted of the Justice Department’s Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, which
was formed to focus on the prosecution of adult obscenity nationwide. The
investigation was conducted by the FBI’s Adult Obscenity Squad, a national
initiative of the FBI based in the Washington, D.C. Field Office, and agents
from the FBI’s Salt Lake City Field Office.
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