Colorado Porn King Indicted
IRS Says Eddie Wedelstedt Failed To Pay Taxes
POSTED: 6:27 am MST March 15,
2005
UPDATED: 8:44 am MST March 15,
2005
DENVER -- A Colorado businessman, dubbed by federal investigators as the country's No. 1 distributor of pornography, will soon be heading to Texas to face 23 federal charges of obscenity, racketeering and tax charges.
Eddie Wedelstedt, of Littleton, owns Goalie Entertainment Holdings Inc., which is headquartered off Colorado Boulevard.
The corporation runs a porn business out of stores like Romantix, located on Colfax and Washington, along with 60 other shops in 18 states across the country.Members of a grand jury watched six videotapes and DVDs sold at Wedelstedt's store and the jury found them to contain obscene material, therefore making them illegal.According to the indictment, handed down in Dallas, "Wedelstedt allegedly conducted a criminal enterprise with the principal aims of distributing obscenity and mailing fraudulent sales tax returns.""The government is basically seeking to forfeit these stores or businesses that were part of the criminal activity or criminal enterprise that he ran," said IRS investigator John Harrison.The IRS is also going after Wedelstedt, 62, stating that he and his company failed to report millions of dollars in revenue."He was one of the largest distributors of pornographic videos in the country that we are aware of and the dollar losses to the government were very significant," said Harrison.The indictment alleges that Goalie Entertainment managed bookstores that sold pornographic magazines, videos and products in the front and showed sexually explicit movies in back rooms to customers who purchased tokens.Prosecutors in the case said some proceeds from the back-room viewing operations were skimmed.Wedelstedt's attorney told 7NEWS that the trial will prove otherwise -- that Wedelstedt overpaid his taxes.Although some may be offended by pornography, it's not illegal unless it's deemed obscene.Two Arlington, Texas, residents, Leroy Moore Sr., 64, and Beverly Kay Van Dusen, 46, were also accused of conspiring to sell porn at Dallas-area stores and paying a percentage of revenues back to Wedelstedt's company.Goalie Entertainment also was named in the indictment, along with Vivian Lee Schoug of Littleton; Arthur Morris Boten of Des Moines; James Randal Martinson of Memphis, Tenn.; and Jeffrey Mark Parrish of Denver.Goalie Entertainment disputes the allegations against it and said it looks forward to proving the company's innocence.While this case involves stores all across the country, investigators in Dallas were the first to file this case, therefore Wedelstedt will report to Dallas when the trial plays out.
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