“Then there’s the kickbacks to the carpenters, and if you plan on using any cement in this building, I’m sure the teamsters would like to have a little chat with ya, and that’ll cost ya. Oh and don’t forget a little something for the building inspectors. Then there’s long term costs, such as waste disposal. I don’t know if you’re familiar with who runs that business, but I assure you it’s not the Boy Scouts.”
– Rodney Dangerfield, “Back To School”
So we got our first porn provider today. I found it hilarious. Kristi found it somewhat disturbing.
We do our research on any new prospects before we call them back. Companies worth working with are easy to spot: there’s a ton of stuff out there about them, press releases, financials, interviews, articles. The dodgy ones have hard-to-find trails. We’ve become pretty good at assessing credit risks simply by crossreferencing publicly available digital sources to quickly assemble an accurate idea of how a company would be as a client.
This morning we were contacted by a company in Miami, and of course they didn’t approach us as a porn company. Outfits like this never do. In this case, they seem to operate under cover of a company that specializes in “digital IP-based content” to home customers, and claim to be closely intertwined with a “digital content innovator” in Europe. There were a number of easy-to-spot red flags, starting with being located in Miami. In our experience, South Florida is home to every flavor of scumball, shady character, con operator and lowlife that America has to offer – do business in Miami at your own risk.
A bit more digging turned up some rough financials. So they’re not a startup; been in business about five years, making about five mil a year. But none of the usual online sources you’d expect from a successful and growing company – no real website, no press releases, no media references, no nothing. Further excavation turned up the truth, that they’re the public front for a Miami-based Internet porn outfit.
I just roared laughing. Wife thought I’d lost it. “It’s HAPPENED!”, I said between chortles. For years I’ve wondered how long it’d take before a porn company called. It was inevitable. It was today.
Before I go on here, let me tell you a bit about real organized crime. As someone once pointed out, first of all, it’s not all that organized. These days, it’s also not all that criminal. Forget knifed-up mobsters in car trunks ala Goodfellas; while there’s plenty of blood in the streets to go around, these people learned long ago that the real money is in the shady areas of almost-criminal activity. The trick is to bend the rules as far as you can without breaking them, to twist the system as hard as you can for profit without actually getting busted hard enough to get jail time. Today’s highly organized criminal operations – from hardcore street gangs like MS13 to the Russkaya Mafiya (the Red Mob) – are a lot more intertwined in the everyday legitimate business world than most people realize.
Last I heard, for example, the Mafiya run a bunch of tourist T-shirt shops in Miami and Daytona. The current head of the Los Angeles Italian crime family allegedly runs his cash through his legitimate real estate companies and a vending machine business. From strip joints to subprime mortgages, it’s often not a long jump from above-board business to a headline waiting to happen.
Being self-employed and working in the business we do, we very occasionally get glimpses. If you’re smart, that’s all you get because you head the other way immediately. I think the closest I ever got was back in ’04, when one of my early clients was pursuing a client of her own, a family-owned cigar maker doing business in Tampa. The company dated back to the Great Depression and had most of their operations happening in the Dominican Republic, making their products there and running an import operation through Miami. My client never actually managed to sell that gig, though she tried damned hard. At one point in the process, the current owners of the company (brothers, the grandsons of the founder) were talking about flying me and her to stay for a week or two at their fortified beachfront mansion in the DR. We’d get some sun and tour their cigar factory. A whole lot of little things didn’t add up with these guys, and I finally told my client no way: if she wanted to leave the country and be at the mercy of these guys she didn’t really know, these guys running a South Florida importing business for God’s sake, that was her lookout. But I’ll stay right here in the US of A, thank you very much.
Were they doing anything illegal? Dunno. But things were shady enough that I wasn’t going to take any chances with it. In Florida, it happens often enough. Mob, street gangs, motorcycle outfits, you name it. They’re all there, and every day learning new ways to make money in almost-legitimate business trade. Internet porn is financially a huge avenue for them, and Miami happens to be a mammoth hub for the Internet porn trade.
So here we were this morning, our first porn provider. In Miami, no less.
No, we’re not working with them. Not even answering their message. But oddly enough I can’t help but feel like a certain milestone has been surpassed here – apparently my writing has achieved professional respect from the online blowjob set, currency in the criminal legitimization industry. I’ve said for years that I worked in the bullshit business; using crafted words to spin subtle messages of corporate confidence, an experienced and talented communicator can hide a lot of sins. So in a kinda sick way, as a writer of Floridian upbringing, I can’t help but see this is as sort of an honor. And a highly amusing one at that.
Like I said, Kristi doesn’t get it either. I’m happy to say that I really don’t expect her to.