Joe Francis is one lucky guy.

No, we don't mean that kind of lucky.

A Santa Monica judge on Monday sentenced The Girls Gone Wild creator to two years' probation and ordered him to pay $500,000 in fines for failing to document as required by law the ages and identities of the flash-happy participants in his raunchy DVDs, some of whom turned out to be underage.

Francis, 33, pleaded guilty last year to a pair of felony record-keeping violations as part of a deal worked out with the Justice Department that allowed him to avoid prison time.

By acknowledging wrongdoing, the Girls guru, his company, Mantra Films, and a related GGW entity, MRA Holdings, agreed to pay the hefty financial penalty and submit to outside auditing of its bookkeeping to ensure compliance with the law. In exchange, the feds agreed to give Francis probation and ordered him to complete 200 hours of community service (no word whether that includes post-spring-break beach cleanup).

If this sounds like déjà vu, that's because Francis received nearly the same punishment last month for pleading guilty on Sept. 12 in Panama City, Florida, to three record-keeping offenses. In that matter, Mantra Films was fined $1.6 million and ordered to hire an outside assessor; Francis escaped a potential 10-year jail term and was instead sentenced to complete eight hours of community service a month for 30 months.

Because Santa Monica is where the soft-porn purveyor resides, where Mantra is based and where the records are kept, the government filed similar improper labeling charges against him there, which Monday's sentence formally resolves.

"These are simply record-keeping violations of a large corporation with almost 400 employees," Francis' rep, Ronn Torossian, said in a statement. "Mr. Francis obviously wasn't involved in every detail of running such a widespread corporate enterprise, but as the CEO, Mr. Francis took responsibility for its record-keeping mistakes.

"It's also important to note that despite certain media misreports, there are not any allegations of intentional filming of underaged girls, as had been previously falsely reported," Torossian added. "The company recognizes the importance of its legal obligations and intends to continue to follow the letter of the law to verify IDs and maintain ID records of participants, and to make sure that all video products distributed contain proper labeling."

Francis' lawyer, Aaron Dyer, told the court his client is an upstanding citizen who simply committed an administrative error and has already gone about rectifying it.

Federal prosecutor Brent Ward countered that authorities had found ample evidence, in the form of raw video confiscated during the probe, that Francis had "little or no regard" for recording the ages of the females appearing in his salacious videos and used alcohol to encourage the exhibitionism.

U.S. District Judge Margaret Morrow agreed with the Justice Department and expressed concern that the penalty wasn't enough, given the nature of the offense and the fact the penalty is a fraction of Mantra's revenue from the franchise.

"It does appear to the court that this was a systemic issue, it was a failure to implement appropriate procedures and policy," the judge said. However, because the deal had already been worked out by both sides, Morrow upheld the terms.

But Francis is not out of the woods yet. He, Mantra and a cameraman still face six charges, including racketeering and felony prostitution, stemming from a 2003 arrest in Panama City for allegedly shooting X-rated footage of two 17-year-old girls in a motel room.

Earlier this month, the judge in that case threw out 40 charges against Francis & Co. after determining there was not enough evidence for them to stand trial. But if he's convicted on the remaining counts, the Girls Gone Wild mastermind would face a maximum of 40 years behind bars.