Joe Francis is keeping his troubles close to home.
After his surprise release from a Reno, Nev., jail last month, the Girls Gone Wild mastermind caught another break Friday, when a federal judge granted Francis' lawyers' request to move his upcoming tax-dodging trial to Southern California.
U.S. District Judge Brian Sandoval agreed to the change of venue, noting that Francis' tax returns were prepared in the Golden State and that he and most of the individuals expected to take the stand in the case reside there.
The ruling means the booby magnate will have home-court advantage of sorts as the feds will now have to prove their tax-fraud allegations in the Central District of California, specifically Los Angeles, which may prove a more favorable climate than the more socially conservative Nevada city.
In April 2007, a federal grand jury in Reno indicted Francis on multiple counts of bribery and tax evasion after an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service claimed he had unlawfully deducted more than $20 million in bogus business expenses on his 2002 and 2003 corporate tax returns.
Per the indictment, the IRS also accused the king of late-night informercials of stashing additional revenue from his X-rated empire in offshore bank accounts and entities supposedly owned by other people, and transferring more than $15 million to a brokerage account in Irvine, Calif., in the name of a Cayman Islands company actually run by Francis himself.
If convicted, he could get up to 10 years in a federal lockup and a $500,000 fine.
Prosecutors fought the venue change on the grounds that the 35-year-old titillation tycoon had presented himself as a resident of Nevada by incorporating Sands Media—one of two companies that produced and distributed his DVDs—in the state, and opened an account in Incline Village, a posh district on Lake Tahoe's eastern shore.
But Francis' camp managed to persuade the judge that his tax returns were mainly prepared and signed in California.
Defense attorneys also plan to rebut the government's claim that Francis' other company, Mantra Films, made excessive and phony deductions on a palatial spread in the Mexican town of Punta Mita, by calling witnesses who will describe the house as a base of operations where the Girls guru made a number of promotional videos and which also served as a "corporate retreat."
Now that it's been transferred to L.A. the trial—originally scheduled for Aug. 26—will likely be pushed back yet again.
Of late, Francis' legal docket has been experiencing some shrinkage.
On March 12, the entrepreneur pleaded no contest in a Panama City, Fla., courtroom to one count of child abuse for filming underage girls, along with several misdemeanors. In return, he was sentenced to time served and six months of "nonreporting" probation, and he and his Girls crew were barred from filming in Bay County for the next three years.
Francis also faces separate misdemeanor sexual battery changes in Los Angeles for allegedly groping a woman at a 2007 party.