'Minor' Sentence For 'Girls Gone Wild' Big

The multimillionaire founder of the "Girls Gone Wild" video empire was sentenced to community service on Wednesday after the company pleaded guilty to federal charges of failing to monitor the ages of the women it films.

Mantra Films Inc. also agreed to pay $1.6 million in fines for using drunken 17-year-olds in videos it filed on Panama City Beach during Spring Break and failing to properly label its DVDs and videos as required by federal law.

U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak told company founder Steve Francis he added the community service to the fine because it did not appear a fine would be a meaningful punishment to the 33-year-old Francis, who makes an estimated $40 million a year.

The fine represents less than 3 percent of Mantra films' profits since 2002 and only 12 percent of Mantra's 2005 profits, Smoak said.

Besides Francis, company president Scott Barbour also was ordered to complete eight hours of community service monthly for the next 30 months. Smoak said two other Mantra executives — likely the general counsel and chief financial officer — would also have to complete the community service, though the judge gave Francis the option of "stepping up" and serving 16 hours a month of community service himself and voiding his corporate officers' obligations to do the service.

"It does not take a very brave man to go out and corner a girl in the middle of spring break who had four drinks," Smoak told Francis.

Francis said his policy has always been not to film girls under 18 and that the girls filmed in Panama City lied about their ages. Aaron Dyer, an attorney for Francis and the company, said his client would serve the judge's sentence.

Founded in 1997, Mantra released 83 different titles and sold 4.5 million videos and DVDs in 2002, according to Hoover's Inc., a business data firm in Austin, Texas.

A second company owned by Francis, MRA Holdings LLC, entered into a deferred agreement on charges of improper labeling. Under that agreement with prosecutors, the charges would be dismissed after three years if MRA Holdings cooperates with future government prosecutions, admits wrongdoing and pays fines.

Also pending against Francis are state felony charges in which he is accused of using children in sexual performances. He is accused of participating in the filming of two 17-year-old girls in sexual situations at a Panama City Beach motel in the same 2003 case that led to the federal charges.