Providence Journal Archives: Kenneth Guarino's Mob Ties, Criminal Past, Global Empire
Posted by NPNAdmin at 1/30/2007 8:54 AM 
Categories: Organized Crime, Capital Video Corporation, Porn Industry, Capital Video Atty Michael Pill, Secondary Effects
Categories: Organized Crime, Capital Video Corporation, Porn Industry, Capital Video Atty Michael Pill, Secondary Effects
Kenneth Guarino owns 100% of the capital stock of Capital Video, the company planning to locate a hard-core porn shop at 135 King Street. We have documented his background and attitude in these previous posts:
Capital Video Owner Kenneth Guarino "was associated with Natale Richichi, a capo in the Gambino family of La Cosa Nostra"
Kenneth Guarino "ranks among porn's most powerful"
Guarino: No Porn for Daughter
Gazette: "Porn shop part of wide network - Founder of Capital Video has faced criminal charges"
The Republican: "Porn profitable for firm's CEO"
Boston Globe Profiled Kenneth Francis Guarino in 1983
The Providence Journal's archives supply additional details in "R.I. pornographer pleads guilty" (1/11/97):
Kenneth Guarino, whose multimillion-dollar erotic empire has gone global, is going to prison...----------------
The plea, after four years of delays, averted a two-month trial that would have shed light on Guarino's multifaceted adult entertainment business, and his ties to the underworld...
Last year, Guarino launched two web sites on the Internet and expanded distribution of his X-rated videos, magazines and CD-ROMS from a chain of stores in the United States into Europe and South Africa.
He opened a foreign sales office in Flensburg, Germany, and agreed to buy Phantasm Holdings, of Holland, a major European distributor of X-rated entertainment products...
In the last fiscal year, Metro Global's revenues climbed 10 percent, to $19.5 million. The company churned out 261 pornographic films--five a week...
[Guarino's] products are available in seven countries and four languages: English, Spanish, German and French...
Guarino, a millionaire, lives in a posh waterfront home in Cranston's Edgewood neighborhood...
Guarino's relationship with mobsters is well-documented. In 1991, the Journal-Bulletin reported that Guarino, Natale Richichi and Gotti met at a Johnston restaurant with other mobsters.
The seeds of the criminal charges were planted in February 1993, when Guarino, Natale Richichi and Cino were indicted on charges that they conspired to bribe the president of the Las Vegas stagehands union.
The men were accused of seeking to obtain favorable treatment in a financially troubled stage show, at the now-defunct Dunes Hotel, that Guarino had invested in.
As part of yesterday's plea, the government dropped those charges.
Following that indictment, prosecutors said, they captured Guarino on federal wiretaps, offering his own contacts in the underworld to help Richichi get fake identification so he could flee to the Dominican Republic...
Richichi apparently considered himself more than Guarino's protector. The plea agreement says federal agents intercepted Richichi telling Patriarca crime boss Francis P. "Cadillac Frank" Salemme "that everything of Guarino's was (Richichi's)..."
Guarino has had past run-ins with the law. In June 1985, he pleaded guilty to federal tax-evasion charges. He served three months in prison and was fined $5,000.
In 1980, Guarino was arrested with 44 others in gambling raids in 12 Rhode Island communities, and charged with operating an organized-crime gambling business. Seven years later, in 1987, he pleaded no contest to bookmaking charges and was fined $250.
In a fine example of doublespeak, Capital Video general counsel Lesley Rich complained recently in a public letter that "a campaign has been waged against our business by individuals that have maligned the reputation of Capital Video." What Mr. Rich calls maligning, we call a well-documented factual record. Elsewhere, Lesley Rich characterizes giant glory holes as retractable "buddy windows" [explicit link].
In October, Capital Video's local attorney Michael Pill claimed to Northampton's City Council that "The company will not tolerate any illegal conduct in or around its place of business." (PDF) Three months later, the Springfield police commissioner called for a License Commission hearing to consider counts of drug sales and lewd activity around the Capital Video shop there.
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