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Year in Review Continues: Kenny Gallo Details His Life in Porn; Hedge Funds Call Milton Ault III a Swindler

> I was never sure what Kenny “Kenji” Gallo [pictured] did in the adult business. Now I know. The former husband of Tabitha Stevens wore a wire and wrote a great book about his time both in the mob and in porn.

Absolutely amazing. That’s what you can call Gallo’s book about his colorful life of crime and his time as a producer in the adult industry. In fact so credibility-defying are some of the things Gallo writes about that at the end of this narrative titled Breakshot: A Life in the 21st Century American Mafia, there’s a statement from the publisher, Phoenix Books, attesting how Gallo passed a polygraph administered by some renowned expert, drawing the conclusion that the contents, therefore, are authentic.

No doubt what Gallo’s saying is all true. You just wonder how one guy in a relatively short life span managed to network with all the cretins, misanthropes, junkies, lawbreakers and sociopaths he writes about and hasn’t wound up face down in a gutter himself.

I’ve been around, but what Gallo says in his reflections about the underbelly of the adult beast – which he gets to about a third of the way into the read – is nothing I’m familiar with in my close to 25 years of writing about it. Maybe I’ve been sheltered. So I wouldn’t know things like if Amber Lynn was the No. 1 fuck of all time like Gallo swears. Or if mob guys run unfettered throughout the grim hallways of porn offices.

Then, again, what Gallo conveys are things you’ll never read about on XBiz or AVN.com, either, both of which tend to serve the industry sunny side up like some merry diner in Disneyland. Which makes you also wonder just how proud Sunny Lane’s parents would be of her association with the kind of enterprises Gallo describes.

For that, alone, Gallo’s book should be required reading for any parent who’s got a kid in or with aspirations to the business. Especially if Gallo believes coke dealing is “glamorous” compared to the “sleazy” aspects of porn. Upon reflection, Gallo who was attracted to the business because of easy money, really nails one essence of the whole thing when he says:

“As a criminal with plenty of experience with segregated lives, I was intrigued by the heightened psychological compartmentalization of the porn women: how could they perform the most debasing acts imaginable in front of dozens of strangers on the set and then, when the scene wrapped, still act with the undiminished hauteur of a movie superstar?”

Ron Jeremy called Gallo’s book “an accurate portrayal of life in the adult industry” which begs the question of just how accurate and honest a book Jeremy’s actually was. While interesting, fun, and a lark, Ron’s book was soft peddling porn gossip in the strict PG-13 sense. Not like Kenny, who when he goes on the attack, can be as vicious as some of the sadistic gang retributions he describes.

Ask Peter North who Gallo calls “a suppressed, self-loathing homosexual” then offers chapter and verse to support his contentions. This is the mild stuff. Considering the fact that Gallo’s reputedly in the witness protection program, if I were North I’d be wondering, too, how thick my dossier was with the Feds with that chummy group picture with Kenny and his crew seeming fairly choice under the circumstances.

Then in describing long time friend Cal Jammer’s suicide, Gallo comes real close to putting Chuck Martino in Jill Kelly’s bedroom at the time it happened. He doesn’t in the strict sense, although, I’m sure Gallo heard the same stories I did. To which you can draw your own conclusions.

Gallo also details how he just about singlehandedly brought Michelle Braun and her hooking empire down. Gallo reveals how madam Braun of Nici’s Girls owed $10,000 to Tabitha Stevens and $8,000 to Dayton Raines and thus got even more on his bad side. Stevens is Gallo’s ex-wife, Raines, another porn performer, was Gallo’s frequent road trip buddy.

Both Raines and Stevens figure prominently in the book while Braun doesn’t quite make it on the list of Gallo’s favorite people. According to Gallo, who wore a wire for eight years, Braun had been one of Steven’s “airhead” groupies before she ventured into her own enterprise, the global sex industry. Since then, Braun has pleaded guilty to charges relating to operating a multimillion-dollar online prostitution ring and was sentenced to bupkus with basically a slap on the wrist, and her name would re-surface later with the Tiger Woods scandal.

“I never would have imagined that she would become the most accomplished sex trafficker of the 21st Century,” writes Gallo with a measure of admiration.

Gallo first met Braun while he was still married to Stevens but disliked Michelle on sight, calling her a plain Jewish girl with an obnoxious attitude.

“She was one of those insecure loudmouth young girls who compensated for her lack of looks by acting like a Quentin Tarantino character- all ego, obscenity and brash cocaine attitude.”

According to Gallo, Braun who supposedly has a voice like a hard-living transvestite, entertained thoughts about becoming a porn star. Which he thought funny especially with the prospects of her facing a merciless casting agent who’d tell her she was better suited to a dog kennel than on the front cover of a porn movie.

Gallo, who similarly considered Braun an entitled brat with gangster pretensions, wanted Stevens to keep Braun away from him. Instead of becoming a porn performer, Braun surprised Gallo by taking her next step- starting her own escort business, Nici’s Girls, by using her growing list of contacts with porn stars and hustling them to high rollers.

Gallo says Braun’s genius was the fact that she recognized the Internet’s global reach and façade of anonymity and used it to her advantage.

Within months Braun had successfully locked down the Internet escort market by creating snob appeal and exclusivity through a system of applications and background checks. Her clients included Fortune 500 CEO’s, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, celebrities, entertainment moguls, aristocrats and politicians.

Subsequently Braun became the biggest madam in California and possibly the world.

“In exchange for a $1,000-$5,000 per hour fee, a high roller could have the porn star, model or actress of his choice sent to his home or favorite hotel with the click of the mouse,” Gallo continues.

But the true high rollers were forking over as much as $100,000 for vacation packages with Braun handling all the details.

“With Michelle paying $20,000 to $100,000 for a weekend of work, almost every major star in the porn industry rushed to join Tabitha on the Nici’s Girls roster,” states Gallo.

Mainstream girls also jumped aboard like Nicole Narain, Colin Farrell’s old girlfriend www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=15907; WWE’s Ashley Massaro www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=28193 and Wonderbra spokesmodel Sophie Anderton.

Gallo also mentions how the late Buck Adams’ “former crush” Kelly Jaye [and Vivid contract girl] received $14 million in payments and gifts from a crooked mortgage broker, [Michael Fanghella www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=30253 ]

In addition, Playboy model Sandy Bentley was given a $1.7 million mansion and six luxury cars by a hedge fund manager who went to jail for fraud.

“It was a symbiotic relationship,” observes Gallo.

“Michelle was a criminal who made introductions between professional prostitutes and professional white-collar crooks.”

As she took in more money, Braun developed a penchant for makeovers similar to Stevens and acquired a fish-lipped face by seeking out Stevens’ contacts for plastic surgery. Gallo refers to them as unprincipled Porn Valley Dr. Mengeles. Braun then herself married a trophy husband named Farrell Kaye a published author and “beefcake DJ”. Gallo reveals that Kaye was later run off Aspen radio when it was revealed that he was one of Colorado’s top male escorts.

With Braun’s new found looks and persona came new business practices, according to Gallo.

“She started to screw girls and clients out of money.”

Because of the money owed Raynes and Stevens, Gallo began pursuing Braun. He called Braun’s father and that’s all it took. With the subtle message conveyed that Gallo knew how to get a hold of her family, Braun wired the money the next day.

Soon Gallo learned that Braun was fronting Stevens money for attorneys in her divorce from Gallo and he began planning to set her up. It didn’t take much convincing. The FBI and IRS were highly interested because the case involved tens of millions in unpaid taxes and seizable assets.

To sweeten the pot, Gallo also threw in Exotica 2000 and its owners Elena Trochetchenkova and Rady Abbassy, who were both arrested in 2005. Having brokered introductions to porn stars and done collection work for Trochetchenkova, Gallo had no trouble arranging a meeting for an undercover female FBI agent to interview as a prostitute.

Braun, in the meantime, wanted to make peace with Gallo to avoid the possibility of him turning her in. She offered him a partnership on an escort agency and website calledSinSatiuonalCity.com. But the wheels were already set in motion by that time.

What put Gallo, who was formerly married to Tabitha Stevens [they met on a Buck Adams set], in the middle of all this insanity is what makes Breakshot so mesmerizing, Breakshot being the code name assigned him as a Federal undercover informant.

Gallo’s ability to manipulate people is well detailed and examined. He compares mob bosses to models, porn stars and actresses for the ability to manipulate them if you know how to push the right buttons. That he could certainly do, and maybe Gallo’s manipulating his entire reading audience for all we know. If so, it’s still one masterpiece of story telling.

Performers like Jenna Jameson and Tera Patrick who have also written books about the biz are Mary Poppinses by comparison.

> Move over Francis Koenig- you’ve got company. Xbiz reported that a dozen hedge funds say they’ve been stiffed after they poured $4.2 million into Milton Ault’s Zealous Inc. But Ault the president and CEO says that economic conditions and a stock-market collapse were to blame.

When the story broke, Ault went on the defensive and told XBIZ that his publicly traded company, once known as Adult Entertainment Capital, wasn’t a scam and that the latest suit is the case where the investors simply didn’t believe their share price was high enough to cash out.

The dozen hedge funds — Briston Investment Fund, Cranshire Capital, Enable Growth Partners, Enable Opportunity Partners, Iroquois Master Fund, Truk Opportunity Fund, Alpha Capital Anstalt, Whalehaven Capital Fund, Truk International Fund, Harborview Master Fund and Pierce Diversified Strategy — claim in a suit filed at New York State Supreme Court that not only were they swindled, but that Ault used their money to fund his lifestyle, which included a swingers ranch that was slated for the Catskills at New Lebanon, N.Y.

The suit alleged Ault stiffed the hedge funds out of their $4.2 million investment in Ault’s firm, Zealous Inc., by shoveling the money into porn, including a publicly traded gentleman’s club and a planned swingers ranch in New York’s Catskill Mountains, according to the paper.

Ault contended that the money always was earmarked for the creation of a platform for the trading of securities, called ZATS (Zealous Alternative Trading System). That financial services unit, however, shut down operations early last year due to an uncertain investment climate and economic conditions, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“There has been a changing market,” Ault said in his defense. “And unfortunately the price of their stock isn’t high enough. Of the $4.2 million, they’ve already recouped about $1 million.”

Ault said that the notion of developing a swingers ranch is “totally untrue” and that Zealous purchased the 140-acre property years before the plaintiffs invested in the company.

“We were discussing how to develop the property and it was joked about, ‘why not open a development for swingers?’” he said. “We were talking about timeshares, not a swingers club.”

In the XBiz interview, Ault mentioned how his Tustin, Calif.-based company helped fund the video “Palin Erection 2008” with Brooklyn Bros. distributing it. [No sooner had Ault opened his mouth that another story broke dragging this shoot into the quagmire of the scandal.]

Ault also went on to detail how Zealous had spent about $1.5 million for an adult portal called TheAdultSpot.com to include adult search-engine indexing, 130 channels of adult content and a social-networking section. He compared the site as “very similar to Google’s AdSense” for adult and said that it will rely quite a bit on mainstream advertising.

Zealous also had plans to debut Surge, a new drink marketed to be sexually enhancing. The company continues to exclusively distribute in California a similar drink called Rock Hard Weekend.

The company also operates adult nightclub magazine Stiletto, as well as Stiletto TV, which airs in the Los Angeles area on KJLA-TV.

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