Scamfluencers - Joe Francis: Indie Sleaze

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Joe Francis created an empire of spring break smut with the “Girls Gone Wild” video series. But the story behind the alcohol-fueled antics is darker than you think. Scaachi interviews Jamila Wignot, director of the docuseries “Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story” as they revisit Scaachi’s original reporting on Joe Francis, and the questionable filming practices, sloppy record-keeping, illegal tax write-offs, and assault allegations that brought Girls Gone Wild to its ignoble end.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to scamfluencers early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or Apple podcasts. A note to our listeners, this story includes mention of sexual assault, sexually explicit content, physical assault, and a very bad word that Joe Francis called me in an email. Listen with care. Sarah, is there anything from the early 2000s that you think about a lot but like everyone else has forgotten? I mean, obviously, there are so many but I'll keep it short. This fake American Idol style show called WB Superstar USA that was trying to find the

worst singer in America. I think about that a lot. That's a good one. I remember that one too. Well, I obviously have one too, and mine is Girls Gone Wild. Do you remember that company? Everyone remembers Girls Gone Wilds because if you watch TV at night, you would get the ads without fail.

It would be like those girls taking their tops off, blurry around the boobs. Yeah, exactly right. Well, Sarah, I actually went so deep on my early Aughts obsession that I reported on it for four years. And now there's a three part docu-series on Peacock based on some of my reporting. For years, Girls Gone Wild was a direct to consumer video series featuring young women flashing while on spring break

and in some cases doing a lot more. It became one of the hottest brands in the country until it all fell apart thanks to financial misdeeds, a once famous CEO, and a lot of very brave women. It's September, 2022, and Joe Francis is wandering around his 45,000 square foot mansion in southwest Mexico.

A storm rolled along the beach the night before, so the sprawling property needs him tidying up. Joe is expecting guests today, and he's a total perfectionist. So he's pacing from room to room, commanding his 30 full-time staff members to clear palm fronds from his several pools, sweep the tennis courts, clean the floor to ceiling glass doors. Oh, and it's a hot day, so someone get him a glass of water. Joe's nearly 50 years old, though he looks much younger. He's about 6 feet tall with tanned forearms and blindingly white teeth.

And he's able to afford this mansion because of the fortune he made in his 20s as the creator of Girls Gone Wild. Joe has lived in Mexico for about a decade when he left the hectic LA party scene for this gated community on the beach. This mansion is his prized possession and his major source of income. It rents for five figures a night.

But Joe isn't getting the house ready for a rich mogul or a celebrity. This afternoon, a reporter and photographer are coming by for an interview. He hasn't given an on-the-record interview with the reporter in nearly 10 years. But today, he's hoping for the chance to set the record straight about his years and years and years

of legal quagmires. Joe's been sued by just about everyone, property managers, former colleagues, ex-girlfriends, even casino magnate Steve Wynn. In fact, the reason Joe is in Mexico is because he'll be arrested if he returns to the United States. He owes money on a bankruptcy case and was supposed to serve time for an assault charge. But instead of paying back the money and going to jail, Joe packed his shit with his ex-partner and went to his property in Mexico to keep the party going.

But now, Joe is pretty alone. His ex and their twin daughters left a few years ago after she accused Joe of abusing her, which Joe has denied. He's largely estranged from his family. His mother once filed for a protective order against him. So now, Joe is without Girls Gone Wild, without the LA party scene,

and without most of his friends, stuck reconsidering his own legacy. I mean, this sounds like something that would happen to a guy who has allegedly caused a lot of harm. But you know, Sarah, today could really change Joe's reputation. He's about 30 minutes late to his meeting with the reporter, but he knows she'll wait. And eventually, Joe energetically bounds into the main living room, wearing Louis Vuitton sunglasses, khaki shorts, and a navy t-shirt.

The room faces the ocean, and the reporter is waiting for him on one of his pristine white couches. When she hears his flip-flops slap against the marble flooring, she turns to greet him. And Sarah, take a guess who this sweet, naive little reporter is. naive little reporter is? I have a feeling this naive little reporter is, in fact, my biggest hater, my biggest op, a little girl named Sachi. Ah, Sarah, that's right. It's me.

M. Night Shyamalan couldn't write this twist if he wanted to. I went to Mexico in 2022 to interview Joe Francis as a part of my reporting about him and his once very lucrative company. Back then, I thought I knew pretty much everything there was to know about Joe and Girls Gone Wild. But it turns out that interview was just the beginning of a very long fall down the rabbit hole.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Grown-ups, enjoy bonus content of Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast exclusively on Wondery Plus. From Wondery, I'm Saatchi Cole, and I'm Sarah Haggi, and this is Scamfluencers. Today we're talking to Emmy nominated director Jamila Wignott, who directed Girls Gone Wild, the untold story. I've been reporting on Joe Francis for four years, mostly on the internet, but, Jamila Wignott, who directed Girls Gone Wild, The Untold Story. I've been reporting on Joe Francis for four years, mostly on the internet,

but once Jamila signed onto the project, she transformed abstract threads of reporting into one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. Am I saying that because I'm a co-executive producer on the project? Shut up, don't worry about it. Girls Gone Wild, The Untold Story, gets into how CEO Joe Francis built his porn empire

in the early aughts, how it all fell apart, and how many girls and women were taken advantage of in the process. Jamila joins us this week to try to answer our age-old question. Is Joe Francis just a shrewd businessman, or is he the ultimate scamfluencer? This is Joe Francis' Indie Sleeves.

Well, to talk about the life, times, and many crimes of Joe Francis, I'm joined by Jamila Wignott, award-winning documentary filmmaker who directed Girls Gone Wild, The Untold Story. Hi Jamila. Hi Saatchi. It's so great to be here. Jamila, you and I, we have different memories of Girls Gone Wild, television, Spring Break, what it was like culturally around women at the time. How would you explain Spring Break MTV culture and the early aughts? Crazy? I'm trying to still process Spring Break and MTV culture and all of that. Yeah. It was not something that I wanted to be a part of. Since nobody can see me,

I am a black mixed-raced girl who grew up in Southern California. So I look nothing like whatever the ideal type of woman was supposed to be. And I didn't really see myself on the beaches of any spring break destination dancing in a bikini. But it was meant to be aspirational. I think I felt like as a woman, I was supposed to want to end up on one of those beaches.

So it's both confusing because I felt distant from it, but also like, is this what I'm supposed to be? It was very much the atmosphere that I was coming of age in. Do you remember when you first saw Girls Gone Wild ad? I don't remember the first time I saw one. Like I don't have an aha moment. I just feel like they were on and they were everywhere. An MTV Spring Break show was already so weird.

I remember being like, there is a camera for faces, there's a camera for boobs, and there's a camera for crotches and butts. Like that already was so strange. And then the next thing was like this commercial with this weird marimba music and people are screaming and then, you know, boobs covered with like little stars show up and you're just like, what? Did you notice when the branding started to leave the zeitgeist, when you weren't seeing the ads anymore, did you register that there was an absence of it? No, I don't think I did. And that was what was so strange about working on this project was sort of,

it was everywhere and then it was absolutely gone. And I couldn't tell if it was gone just because everybody had decided the fad that it was, like, wasn't meaningful or cool or whatever. And I can't even think about what exactly replaced it. Okay, well, let's talk about our friend Joe Francis. How would you describe him? How do you explain Joe Francis? Oh gosh.

Charming? He's very charming. He's tall. Handsome. Can you explain Joe Francis? Oh gosh. Charming? He's very charming. He's tall, handsome. Very handsome. I don't find him as handsome now as he was like circa 2011. Well, he's 51 now. But he's also gotten like that, he's like super cut now.

Definitely doesn't eat any bread. Yeah, he's very vascular. Yes. He's very toothy and tan and he's very boisterous. And talks at a rapid clip. He talks so fast. I found him really charming, and I totally was like, oh, I get it.

Like if this guy or an acolyte of this guy came up to me and I'm 18, and he tells me I'm pretty and then offers me a drink and is like, let me see your boobs. I'd be like, sure, which one? Like I get it. Yes. And I think people have an image in their head

of like creepy dudes. These girls should have known better. No, I think that's the thing. Joe Francis is classically handsome in a way that draws people in. And he also is really, really, really confident and speaks with an authority that I find fascinating. I felt like talking to him, I was like,

oh, I feel like I'm losing grip with what I think reality is, because his is so convincing. That's right. And that makes him incredibly tricky, but it also makes him the kind of guy who can walk into a room and sell people on things. And I feel like that is his secret weapon. So now we're going to get into like the evolution of the company. Joe Francis started in reality TV, and then he created a direct to consumer video series called

Banned from Television, which was basically a compilation of violent and disturbing TV outtakes. It was basically a compilation reel of material that was too graphic for mainstream broadcast or even cable broadcast at that point. I watched half of a tape and I just want to be clear, like he did not film that material, but it is a compilation of, it's a lot of brown people killing each other. So, yeah, or it a lot of brown people killing each other, so. Yeah. Or it looks like working class people. So there's this weird indulgence in a particular kind of violence that feels classist and racist and strange and so particular to the 90s that I couldn't get through more than half of a

full tape because it was just, it was totally overwhelming to me. And I could not believe that it was something that could legally be sold at the time. How or why do you think Joe made the jump from putting together these compilation videos that are mostly about violence and then pivoting into Girls Gone Wild? Well, the best we can go on is the story that Joe Francis himself tells, which is that he was scrubbing through some material of a compilation that was meant to go into one of these banned from television tapes. And he stumbled upon a piece of footage that somebody had filmed of girls in New Orleans who were flashing

and he couldn't believe what was going on. And he was surprised and also turned on and it reminded him of his own spring break trip that he took. And so he has this aha moment of like, oh, I should just start making a whole set of tapes that are just this. Like, I think that's the next big thing. And he wasn't wrong. He was right. It totally worked. But I guess I'm always curious and I never really came to a settled answer while we were working on this, is how much of that self-mythology he tells about the beginning of the company. Do you think that was all him? Do you think this was his idea? There's a lot of people who feel like it wasn't.

Right. Well, interestingly, we know for a fact that ban from television wasn't his own idea. He had been presented a deck by a producer who was at this company called Real TV where Joe Francis got his start in production. It was basically the initial idea of what would become ban from television. And we know this to be true because this producer later sued Joe Francis and a jury found him guilty of having stolen somebody else's idea. So it just raises questions about whether or not this aha moment of selling girls boobs on tape was also something that he generated himself or was somebody else's idea. But he does know that he has to have a good story.

It's not enough to just walk into a room and be like, boob tapes, take them. He knows that he needs to be like, let me tell you the deep story of where this boob tape comes from. So crazy. I think that he knows that that story has meaning for probably other young men So what was a girls gone wild tape actually offering a lot of people don't know what's on these tapes And so what was on these tapes and what do you think was so appealing?

I want to start by saying I started this project having no idea Yes, what was on a tape either because I never one, and I never knew anyone who had one. And so, lo and behold, it turns out that the flashing is just the tease at the top of a tape, and what you would actually get once you bought it was a tape of pornography performed by two non-professional girls who stumbled into this moment of pornography stardom. And it's very weird to say all of those words out loud today because it doesn't make sense to me ethically from jump.

And then once I watched a tape, I was even more confused because you hear this running commentary of a man prompting and prompting and prompting and prompting throughout it. So then it's not pornography that happens because two women walk into a room and clothes come flying off and they have desire and they want to do something. It's like, oh, there's this exchange that happens where somebody gets them to do it. And I was like, where's the sex in these tapes? Where is the sensuality?

Where is the desire? Where is any of that? And so that was then like, oh no. What is this? Yeah, that's the point. How were Girls Gone Wild staff trained to film these encounters? What was encouraged? And were there any legal boundaries that were laid out for them? That is a phenomenal question.

We were able to find a document that was sent out to third party vendors, and that document lays out very clearly how a cameraman is supposed to operate. They are supposed to be incredibly, like in all caps, be persistent. They are supposed to find the hottest girl in the room. The hottest girl is defined as a wafer thin blonde with B cup breasts and no bigger and very narrow of hip

and go out and find that girl at the party and get her to flash or make out with a friend. Basically a set of instructions that make very clear that the camera person is not meant to take no for an answer. So you are meant to go out to this party, find a young woman, and harangue her until she eventually breaks down and gives in and does it. And there was footage that we saw that, you know, once we did start going through some of the tapes

where you hear them say no. That's right. And they're trying to get out of the room or out of the space, and you hear how the camera guy convinces them or tries to get them to just to stay or to do one more thing. Right.

And I think that's an interesting piece of kind of what I was talking about earlier where I was confused about the lack of desire, sexuality, pleasure in these tapes is that you do see women who say no and try to maneuver and figure out some way to work within this weird dynamic. But ultimately they do say yes. So this like no means yes notion, which like every soap opera I watched as a kid, that is what a wonderful man is all about. He's supposed to fight for it. Yeah, he's supposed to fight for it and I'm supposed to be coy or some weird dance of our species. But that is what's in those tapes. And so that is also part of the kink. Right. Dark. So Joe was getting pretty rich. He founded Girls Gone Wild in 1997. He made

$20 million in the first two years. In 2002, Girls Gone Wild issued 83 titles and they sold 4.5 million videos and DVDs. How would you say that these numbers and all of these millions of dollars compared to what the subjects of these films, the girls, were getting paid? Startling inadequacy or inequity rather, both. The camera people that we've spoken to, both the participant who appeared on camera as part of the documentary series and other camera operators who we spoke with, said that in particular when trying to get a woman or her friends to do a scene, which in Girls Gone Wild parlance is basically the pornographic encounter.

You were allowed to pay them some modest sum of money, like $100, but you were encouraged not to offer that up right away. And this is complicated because this was 2000. This money was enough to be kind of meaningful at that time, and I think that's what, you know, one of the camera people explained to us, that $100 at that time could have bought you like another night at whatever spring break town you're in. You could get one more day on vacation.

It's like just enough to be really meaningful to somebody who is between the ages of 18 and 22, which a lot of these women were. It's effective. But what that was buying Joe Francis and the Girls Gone Wild empire was a in perpetuity use of these images of these women forever. It doesn't go away. These things are still out there. And so if you think about that, it's like you're 18, you're drunk, it's very transactional, you've been sort of persuaded and coerced.

And now, 20 years later, they still own your image. And there is something that feels like a scam in that. Yeah, for sure. And speaking of scams, we have to talk about Joe Francis's tangled web of lawsuits. Girls Gone Wild makes him a multimillionaire before he's 30, but his empire starts to crumble when Joe gets into some serious legal trouble. He's accused of everything from cheating on his taxes, to failing to keep proper age records of the women he was filming, to pissing off a Vegas billionaire by not making good

on gambling debts. Find out which accusations stick, and which ones help bring him down after the break. Start your day informed and anew with Up First by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk Cafe, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know, ain't no party like a diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down.

Today, I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit Robb Bottom, but I made no excuses. This custom so sorry.

Until you're wearing orange jumpsuit it's not real now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace from law and crime this is the rise and fall of getting listen to the rise and fall of gettingdy exclusively with Wondery+. Okay, Jamila, let's talk about the big lawsuits that shaped Joe Francis' life and eventually lead to the downfall of Girls Gone Wild. Let's start at the beginning. In 2006, Joe pled guilty to federal charges that he failed to properly track the girls who appeared in the Girls Gone Wild videos.

He agreed to pay a $500,000 fine, and then Joe gets targeted by the IRS. In April 2007, Joe was indicted by a federal grand jury in Nevada for federal tax evasion. The indictment alleges that his companies claimed more than $20 million in false business expenses on corporate income tax returns in 2002 and 2003. The company paid for Joe's Mexican house, his Porsche, and other items. And the indictment also charges that Joe used offshore bank accounts to conceal income. In the fall of 2009, Joe Francis reaches an agreement to plead guilty to filing false tax returns. And he agrees to pay $250,000 in restitution.

And then Joe faces the first of two major lawsuits he'll have to deal with in Panama City Beach, Florida. For people who don't know, though, explain how big of a deal Panama City Beach was from the late 1980s even into the early 2000s. That was MTV Spring Break in the Bible Belt. So the kinds of people you're getting is a wild mix of locals who hate it, think it's like the devil coming to town,

local girls who love it and are like really letting loose because they're having the time of their life, and then tourists, people from all over who are partying for two weeks. And Girls Gone Wild was there for a month. Over the years, Girls Gone Wild and Joe had earned a reputation amongst the locals, especially with the mayor and Bay County law enforcement. In April 2003, county officials arrested Joe

and several other Girls Gone Wild employees under suspicion of possessing cocaine, amongst other charges. They also raided Joe's rental house, seized his Gulfstream private jet, and his very precious silver Ferrari. And they confiscated more than 175 hours of footage taken in Panama City Beach. But here's the thing, this investigation was all done under the Rico Act, which is typically used to bring down mob syndicates or drug rings. This strategy backfired big time. In January 2007, a judge dropped many of the

felony charges, citing a lack of evidence. The remaining felony counts charged Joe with using minors in sexual performances and conspiring to use minors in sexual performances. One thing Florida law enforcement did manage to do was put Joe Francis behind bars, at least for a little bit. In 2007, Joe was put in jail for contempt of court for screaming at prosecutors in a different civil case and the tax evasion charges. About a year later, Joe pled no contest to the remaining criminal charges of child abuse and prostitution, and he's finally able to leave jail. But while Joe thought he was done with Panama City and his countless lawsuits there, the county had other plans for him. In 2011, four women appeared in court in a civil lawsuit against Joe Francis.

They claimed that they were all under 18 when they were filmed for Girls Gone Wild in Panama City Beach. Allegedly, the youngest was 13 when she was filmed. So Jamila, can you describe what some of the consequences were that these girls endured as a result of being on these tapes? I don't think people really understand what it means for a 13-year-old girl to have been taped by Girls Gone Wild, to have had that image of her made public

to literally every single person that she knows in her life. From that moment on, she is a person whose identity, as far as the world around her is concerned, is fixed as this girl who did this dirty, shameful thing that good girls don't do. So you are just carrying this baggage of having to explain yourself or to laugh it off or to drop out of school or to not end up going to college

the way that you hope that you someday would. Thirteen is just so very young. That's the youngest girl in the case. The other victims here, a couple of them were filmed in a shower scene, a couple of them were taken into a room and were asked to touch Joe Francis' penis for 50 bucks each. It still continues to surprise me

that we cannot have empathy for these girls or what they went through because they're all supposed to know better. The shame that they feel, the weaponization of that shame by the people around them, and then the burden that they have to carry as having agreed to do a bad thing that stays with them, it created psychological effects for many of these girls. They became addicted to drugs. They became alcoholics. Like they were in court explaining the reality of what

they experienced and then being told that they were liars and making something up in order to get a monetary sum out of Joe Francis. Yeah. When I went down to do some reporting in Panama City where Girls Gone Wild was filmed, a lot of the locals I talked to remembered this case and they were not sympathetic to the girls. They thought all the girls deserved it. Oh, still. Still. The feeling was still, you know, this big city guy came in and tried

to ruin our town. But the problem is, is that these girls should have known better. Why were they going to the beach during spring break? Right. And several women with similar stories had sued Joe Francis in criminal court and they lost. So what do you think these women were seeking by going through the civil courts? I think there was a hope that if Joe Francis was found guilty, it might put a stop to the company that he had and to other women in their wake finding themselves in the same situation. So in March 2011, Joe Francis decides to represent himself at trial. He personally cross-examines victims and their mothers in front of an all-female jury.

I mean, how strange is it to have a defendant representing himself cross-examining the moms in particular, like reading how he was speaking to their mothers, the questions he's asking of them, and the fact that they have to answer this to the person that they believe assaulted their daughters. It seems incredibly painful. Joe, in his audio interview with Saatchi, is very gleeful in the ways that he just went for the jugular with these victims and their mothers, that he believed that they were liars and he was there to just destroy them.

I can't imagine having to defend yourself against a person who you believe was the perpetrator of harm. What is his defense effectively? Joe denies almost everything that he's been accused of and he denies central parts of this case as well. What was his denial in this? What was his defense in court? The defense that Joe presents is that these women lied about their ages to participate

in a Girls Gone Wild tape and to sign a release, which is what each of them did end up signing. You must be 18 years or older. Yes. And so that's his defense is that they asked the girls what their ages were and that each of the girls had said that they were 18 years old. And so this was a case of having been lied to and what hope could he have of knowing in that moment? And so they film these girls

and he would never, ever, ever film an underaged girl that that was not neither an interest of his nor a demographic that the Girls Gone Wild brand was seeking out. Well, after the week long trial, the jury finds that Joe's behavior is indeed monstrous, but he does not owe any of the four women any damages. What was jury deliberation like? I think a lot of people

sort of thought like, oh, surely he's going to get something, even a slap on the wrist. This is an all female jury, but instead they really let him walk away. Yeah. So we spoke with a psychologist who was there, and it sounds like the jury deliberation was pretty intense. It is not clear that they were all necessarily on the same page. It seems like they were really struggling to come to a decision here. And I think from the outside observers, you know, it was an all-female jury that was left to decide the fate of, you know, these women. And it's interesting that you would, I think, at first thought say, oh, they're going to be prejudicial because they're all women and they're going

to side with the other women. Intriguingly, they don't. The reporting we found was that the jury comes back in, that one of the jurors is crying, and they end up deciding not to award any financial damages to the victims. They also don't find him liable for intentional affliction of harm. They find him liable for basically gross behavior that is untoward, that like no society could possibly find that he was behaving in a quote unquote good way, but it wasn't an intentional infliction of harm and therefore no damages were awarded. This whole event, the trial, all these claims that are made, does this impact Joe's reputation

at all or the business in 2011? I mean, it does and it doesn't. It's sort of happening at this moment when I think Girls Gone Wild is in many ways being eclipsed by other social media forces. So the company is sort of starting to fall. But I don't think anyone sees him as having done anything bad because of the decision that gets made. To the degree that Girls Gone Wild starts to dissipate in its power, he still gets to walk away and claim that he was victorious, that he was vindicated, that he was himself victimized by girls who effectively harmed him.

That's his take. And the jury agreed with him. They did. Yeah. Well, around the same time that the civil case is filed against Joe, another lawsuit comes around in Panama City that actually puts a dent in his empire. Joe is making nearly $30 million a year from Girls Gone Wild, and he's become a true celebrity. He dated Kourtney Kardashian for a while, Jennifer Aniston vacations at his house in Mexico, and he spent a lot of time and money in Las Vegas. And then, in July 2008, Steve Wynn sued Joe for $2 million, claiming that Joe had not paid for losses at Wynn's casino. And seemingly unable to help himself, during a hearing in that case, Joe reportedly jumped

to his feet and told the judge that he heard from Quincy Jones that Steve is threatening to kill him and bury him in the desert. He then repeated those claims to TMZ and on Good Morning America. He also claimed that Steve was deceiving high rollers at his casinos. So Steve sues Joe for defamation and slander. And this lawsuit feels different than the others because Steve Nguyen has the time and the money to financially destroy Joe Francis. And he's maybe the only person who could. That's right. It's a strange turn of events to have had just so many numerous instances of women who were taped come forward, attempt to reclaim their images, attempt to just get off tapes, attempt to be taken off the covers of things,

case after case after case, and the company keeps chugging along. Then he goes up against this adversary who is just like the biggest fish. Financially, I don't think Joe Francis as an individual or his company were in a place to take this on. Then literally in the trial, they just called Quincy Jones to the bench and he swears on the Bible and is like, I didn't say that.

Okay, thanks. I'm out. Quincy Jones out. So the lawsuits take several years to work their way through the courts. And then in 2012, juries rule in Steve's favor. And they say that Joe owes Steve more than $47 million for slander and defamation. And then in 2013, Girls Gone Wild declares bankruptcy. It's confusing to be wrestling with a subject like Joe Francis and the questions surrounding the ethics of the brand he created and to have it be undone ultimately through this completely out of left field way.

I always got the impression that Joe kind of wanted to be like Hugh Hefner. And he was a little frustrated that there were these uber rich businessmen who weren't really letting him into the club. Like, Steve Wynn just didn't like him. And then when he got the chance to take Joe down, he took it.

There isn't really concrete schadenfreude for someone like Joe. He then when he got the chance to take Joe down, he took it. There isn't really concrete schadenfreude for someone like Joe. He isn't in jail. He hasn't really had to pay any consequences for any of his actions. But he has quietly and steadily been unspooled. There has been comeuppance for someone like Joe, but it just doesn't look like how we might expect it to look. So we talked about lawsuits against Girls Gone Wild for its tax evasion, and against Joe for running a shady business and not repaying his gambling debts. But throughout Joe's life, he's also faced accusations of sexual assault and violence. The case that ultimately drives Joe into hiding in Mexico typifies the frightening kinds of abuse that he's been accused of by several women. So in January 2011, Joe met three women at a

supper club in Hollywood and took them back to his Beller mansion after a night of partying, and then he refused to let them leave. And he was accused of attacking one of the women, bashing her head into his tile floor. Yes. Joe's interaction with women seems, by their accounts, to have a point at which a small thing escalates into a very physical confrontation, often violent confrontation. That's just one example of this kind of story. You know, another is the incident that he has with Jade Nicole at a bar in LA where after spending an evening going around a club kissing women who were not his now ex-partner Abby Wilson,

he then tries to kiss Abby Wilson and she's trying to tell him no. Jade Nicole, as a friend of hers, basically pours a drink on his shoulder as a like, fuck you dude, move. On security footage, you see him turn around, grab Jade Nicole by the hair, fling her to the floor, and then he proceeded to start to kick and beat her. And there is footage of this. There's footage of that.

It's hard to watch, but it's very clear, like, how things are happening and the proportionality of his response. That's right. And it's interesting because a lot these allegations of physical violence include up to his own mother. Yes. Being assaulted by him, which we uncovered through your reporting. And so there's a restraining order that his mother had filed against him. Yeah, in the restraining order, it says that he had like flipped over his sister and that he was screaming at her. And again, Joe has denied to me and to other journalists that he's ever assaulted any woman ever in any context.

Right, it feels like he's a very unpredictable person. By these accounts, it feels that way, like that there could be a moment where he just turns on a dime. And it's real rage. Yeah. At this point, are news outlets taking claims against Joe more seriously?

What's sort of the collective attitude around him at this point? Because he's not like the playboy he was. Things are starting to change. Things are starting to change for Joe at this point. I mean, I think it's a Gawker article that dubs him the douche of the decade, which is an article he was very, very offended by. And then he wanted to get it taken down. It's like, that's just not a thing you can do.

Even cable news stories are referring to him as a porn king or a smut peddler. There is this change that's happening where it feels like people understand maybe what the brand is. They don't seem to have a huge problem with it, or nobody's questioning the ethics of it as deeply, but he can no longer, it seems, walk in the same circles that he once did. Yeah, yeah. In August 2013, he was found guilty of three counts of false imprisonment and one assault likely to cause great bodily injury, and he was

sentenced to 270 days in jail. And then, Jamila, he fled to Mexico. Why did he leave the country? What was he hoping for? He doesn't want to serve his jail sentence. That's one reason. But actually, the case is going to go through an appeals court. I mean, he can retry the case. You know, I don't know. There seem to be other options than just leaving the country. Another lawyer who we interviewed is like, nine out of 10 people would never do this. No, they wouldn't.

Just to not have to serve this sentence. Yeah. He was really afraid of jail. Yeah. I don't think Joe Francis is a person who likes to be confined to spaces. So I'm sure the specter of having to go back to prison is not one he was eagerly awaiting, but now he's in the situation that he's in where he cannot come back. Okay.

Well, for now, we're going to leave Joe in the prison of his own making. When we come back, we're going to fast forward to 2020 when I started digging into the story and landed an interview with Joe himself. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season 2, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met.

But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part. Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge. But this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me. And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health.

This is season two of Finding and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. So Sachi, what made you think of Joe Francis and Girls Gone Wild as the subject of a story? I knew Joe Francis as like a LA weirdo. I was reading Perez Hilton every day in high school because I wanted to be a writer and I was like, this is a job?

This is yelling people's a job, which it is and I do it very ably. But I would read all of it and Joe was always out with all these famous people and I didn't really get a handle on who he was and I had looked up Girls Gone Wild and I was like, what is it? Like a flashing company, whatever. And then I was working at Buzzfeed News and Karolina Waclawiak, who you and I know

very well, and she's one of the producers, is Gen X. And she was like, what happened to that guy? And I was like, yeah, I don't know. And so we started looking at it. And as soon as I realized that the tapes were porn, I was like, oh, this is something else. Obviously there had been lots of lawsuits. By the time I was really looking into him, he was very much ensconced in Mexico. He was not coming back.

But I didn't know that much about him as a person. I knew the company had shut down. I didn't know why. I thought it would just be like, this is going to be a funny nostalgia story about this weird company and that it was probably bad for us like everything is, but not like keep you up at night bad. And then we looked into the legal situation that was happening in Panama City with him in Florida. And that's where we were like, oh, this is where he got in trouble. And so

we first started by going to the judges and all of the people who worked there on his cases. And then eventually we were like, oh, they screwed up. So they're never going to talk about it. But Joe might. — What made you think that Joe Francis would do an interview with you guys? — It seems like everyone who approached Joe was asking him to tell his side of the story or to address specific allegations. And I wanted him to do that, but I was also specifically interested in talking to him about the Panama City Beach criminal case, the one where they pursued RICO charges

and almost all of the evidence got thrown out. I don't know for sure why Joe agreed, but I do get the sense that he felt like the case was being botched by law enforcement and that equates to him having never done anything wrong. And he really wanted to set this record straight. And by this time, he's living in Mexico all by himself. His ex-partner, Abby, has left with their two kids.

It was the height of the pandemic. No one's really traveling to visit him. I think he'd been alone for a long time, and I think he wanted to chat. Did you start to build a relationship, you know, with him before going down? Did you guys sort of have a back and forth exchange for a while? We talked on the phone often. He would text me a lot. He would send me a lot of emails,

but I didn't know what was going to happen when I would ask him the question that he doesn't like. Because I hadn't done a lot of that over the phone. I was just trying to keep him warm, because you don't want to get into an argument with Joe Francis. But I had already read Claire Hoffman's story in the LA Times from 2006. And that story begins and ends with him assaulting her.

Like he demands that she kiss her, he forces himself on her, he twists her arm, he's shoving her around, like it's really brutal. And so I was pretty aware, like whatever I might think about him right now, yeah, he might be polite to me, like I don't know how long that's going to last. Right. So they sent me with security and a driver and they sat outside for nine hours in that car and just waited. And I went in there and the second I walked into his house, my phone stopped

having service because it's a dead zone in there. So my options are to join Joe Francis's wifi network or to just be like, I don't have service in here. So I didn't have service in there. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So I'm curious, what were your expectations and did you feel like your expectations were met or were they not? Were you surprised by anything? Yeah. Like the second I met him, I was like, oh, this is going to be tough. I mean, he

really does talk to you like a toddler that's getting distracted by the things in the room, and you're trying to keep him focused. And also, he doesn't speak in a linear fashion. No, he's circuitous, he loses his train of thought, which is so interesting because in the tape, he's not angry. When I spend time with him, he never gets mad, not really, like even when I disagree with him,

he just like takes it on the chin and tells me I'm wrong and keeps it moving. There were a few times he got kind of frustrated, but mostly he's bored. Like you can hear him be like, are you gonna ask me this again? Like how many times do you have to go over it? And it's like, well, we're talking about rape allegations,

so I have to ask you a few times. Right, but he never gets furious, almost like he's not really taking it seriously, until later, when the story is published and then he takes it seriously. Right. Right. And what was his reaction when the article was published? When the article came out, he wrote several emails to me and everybody else on the Buzzfeed servers calling me a cunt and the several other names that I find kind of uncreative, honestly, is the problem. And

then when the documentary came out, he didn't say much, but he did a podcast appearance like a week after saying that it was all false, but not really getting into specifics. Right. What would you say was Joe's reaction to the documentary? He is saying that the documentary is inaccurate, that we have our facts wrong. His reaction is one of being aggrieved. He is, in his mind, the victim in the story still. So in every Scamfluencer's episode, we are trying to assess if somebody is a Scamfluencer,

which is someone who is kind of pulling some sort of scam, some ripoff, but they're using their influence. That is a huge part of it. They're wielding a lot of influence around other people. Do you think that Joe Francis is a Scamfluencer? I think that in the beginning of his rise and at the height of his power, I think he was a scamfluencer. I think he was able to harness media and his celebrity connections

to present a vision of what his company was doing that stands at odds with all the allegations of numerous, numerous women who were taped by that company. And so I think he was. I don't think he is now. Again, anecdotally, I sort of started asking very young people who, you know, inconceivably to me, were born after Girls Gone Wild. I'm so old. I'm so old. You know, their faces, it doesn't compute. It makes absolutely no sense to them. It seems almost puerile to them. It's both like, why would anyone make that? Why would anyone do that?

What's the point? How could that person have become so influential? Every time I talk to young people about it and I try to explain it, I start to get confused. Because as I'm explaining it, it starts to make less and less sense. But it made a lot of sense at the time. Yeah, it was the 90s is really, we were saying that a lot.

Has working on this made you think differently about Instagram, OnlyFans? I mean, that is like the natural conclusion of a story, like this where it's like, well, now women can own their own sexuality, which is great for whatever purpose. Does it make you think a little about what all of that means, what Girls Gone Wild has wrought, if you think it has wrought anything? It does make me think about things like Instagram and OnlyFans.

And on the one hand, I'm like, no harm, no foul. I really don't have any problematic feelings about sex work and pornography and any of that stuff. It's like, that's fine. I think in terms of the labor and who owns what and who's making the most out of it, that yes, of course, an individual only fan user is making some money, but the profits being generated at the very top of the company that allows the platform to exist and the service fees and all that.

They're clearing infinitely more. This idea of, like, an 18-year-old girl in Panama City Beach taking $100 to be taped. In terms of just the finances of it, the economics of it, that doesn't feel that distinct from an OnlyFans person making $1,000, even $30,000 if somebody at the top owns the business apparatus. Yeah.

So it is really still about ownership, always. At the heart of this is really a story about women's bodily autonomy. Do we have any of it? And if we do, do we get to make money off of it or not? Do we control our images? That's the big theme that I think is at the heart of this story, which is what women have control over, what we're responsible for, who carries the shame.

These are such old ideas. It's so interesting with Girls Gone Wild where like, I think it's very important for people to understand that the commercials made it seem like there was choice, that people were making active decisions, a conscious decision, well thought out, and they're like, oh, you have a camera

and I wanna be here for it. Surely there were some of those women, but there were a lot of cases where a woman was approached. It's in the spur of a moment that she makes a choice or doesn't make a choice. One of the women we feature, she doesn't even remember doing it. That's how of a moment that she makes a choice or doesn't make a choice. One of the women we feature, she doesn't even remember doing it. That's how inebriated she was when it happened.

And so it's also this odd thing where the terms of the choice are so murky or nonexistent in the worst cases. And that does feel like something that's different. And in fact, at some point, the brand had become so popular, college women in these towns were like, and that does feel like something that's different. And in fact, at some point, the brand had become so popular, college women in these towns were like, I mean, yeah, but give me my, like, the jig was up.

They're like, what do you mean you only wanna pay me $50 or $100? Like, you're literally Girls Gone Wild. You have three bands. Your neighbor is Quincy Jones. Like, how is your organization not able to pay me? And people were probably thinking more deeply about the consequences at that point too. So is this scammy enough?

I mean, I certainly feel like I've been ripped off, so yes. Jamila, thank you so much for coming on Scamfluencers. Thank you for making this documentary. I'm so grateful to you. And I hope you never have to talk to me again. Thank you, Sachi. You have given me an opportunity to open the black box that was my coming of age. And, boy, there's a reason I put that on a shelf and tried to, like, not think about it.

Yeah, I'm really sorry. But it's important. And so thank you for getting me to, like, dig through it. You're welcome. If you like scam flincers, you can listen to every episode early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey. This is Jo Francis, Indie Sleeves. I'm Saatchi Cole.

And I'm Sarah Haggye. If you have a tip for us on a story that you think we should cover, please email us at scamfluencers at Wondry.com. Thanks to Jamila Wignot for joining us for this episode. All three parts of Girls Gone Wild, The Untold Story, are streaming now on Peacock. Fact-checking by Lexi Peary. Sound design by John Lloyd. Our music supervisor is Scott Velazquez for Freeze on Sync. Our managing producer is Desi Blaylock.

Our senior managing producer is Callum Pluse. Janine Cornelow and Stephanie Jens are our development producers. Our associate producer is Charlotte Miller. Our producer is Julie McGruder. Our senior producers are Sarah Enney and Jenny Bloom. Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman, Marshall Louie, and Erin O'Flaherty.

For Wondry. Hello ladies and germs, boys and girls. The Grinch is back again to ruin your Christmas season with Tis the Grinch holiday podcast. After last year, he's learned a thing or two about hosting and he's ready to rant against Christmas cheer and roast his celebrity guests like chestnuts on an open fire. You can listen with the whole family as guest stars like John Ham, Brittany Broski, and Danny DeVito try to persuade the mean old Grinch that there's a lot to love about the insufferable holiday season. But that's not all.

Somebody stole all the Children of Whoville's letters to Santa and everybody thinks the Grinch is responsible. It's a real Whoville whodunit. Can Cindy Lou and Max help clear the Grinch's name? Grab your hot cocoa and cozy slippers to find out. Follow Tis the Grinch holiday podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Unlock weekly Christmas Mystery Bonus content and listen to every episode ad free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.