Let me start this blog entry by saying that the only time I physically met Johnny Pockets was that fateful day in 2006 when I declined to buy his store in downtown Bangor. Though, over the years, I heard about how much he hated me. People like Fast Tony would say, "Johnny is really pissed at you because you took over his rental space and never took the 'Needful Things' decal sign off the front windows."
Boo-freaking-hoo.
I certainly didn't do it to piss off Johnny Pockets. But he didn't own the rights to the title "Needful Things," nor does Stephen King. Maybe the font design is trademarked by the publisher and Mr. King, but since I never heard from anyone about it (except Fast Tony), I wasn't obligated to do anything. Besides, I was trying to build up a "Stephen King" section of movies, books, and collectibles at the location—real collectibles with legitimate signatures and autographs.
Also, when we opened the Ellsworth Edge Video store, many of our customers down there also went into Johnny Pockets' "store" in that town. They would come back to Edge and say things like, "The guy at Needful Things sure doesn't like you."
No kidding.
Around this time, Johnny Pockets was convicted of two theft-related charges. Here are the links to the news stories and court documents:
They kind of speak for themselves.
Jump back to 2015. Like I said, I was doing my best to move on in life, working on EDGE Mobile Trading, writing a lot, brainstorming new business ideas. Then, on the morning of August 4th, we got the most unpleasant wake-up call.
Homeland Security, along with the Brewer Police Department and who knows what other law enforcement agencies they dragged along, all came for coffee and donuts. Except we didn't have any coffee, and I assume they ate all the donuts before they got to 5 Cross Street.
This wasn't our first time at the rodeo, so we basically stood around and waited for them to finish trashing our home. Leading the charge was Homeland Security Special Agent Loren Thresher, and I didn't know at the time that I would come to respect Mr. Thresher. Aside from occasionally lying to me, I never felt like he was threatening or bullying me, like some of his peers tend to do. I really got the impression that he was just doing his job, or perhaps he was the "good cop" in the operation. Either way, I hold no animosity towards him or anyone else involved in the proceedings against me. My goal in writing this blog is to explain my reasoning for never pleading guilty and my belief that this entire criminal copyright prosecution was a facade for a real criminal investigation.
All of that said, if my side of the story is entirely told, and if the pretextual prosecution is 100% legal and society thinks the whole thing is totally okay, then I will proudly go to prison and spend the rest of my days fighting for real copyright reform.
Back to that first federal warrant search, our third concerning the actual investigation. At some point, Loren came to me with papers to sign. It was a list of the items they were taking: computers, DVDs, notebooks, duplicators, etc.
As he was reading it off to me, I said, "Yeah, yeah, sure, just let me sign it." I just wanted them out of there. I hadn't had any breakfast, and it was already a long day.
As I was signing, I mumbled something like, "Same as before."
Loren looked at me and said, "You've had search warrants served before."
I was dumbfounded. There were a lot of the same Brewer PD officers involved in this search. Really? 5 Cross Street had never come up in their law enforcement knitting circle meetings???
I wasn't going to say anything, but Heidi spoke up, "Yes, there was a massive investigation involving this guy named Jonathan Tardiff and a large Walmart theft ring. Somehow, the Brewer PD thought we were involved in it."
Loren just shrugged and watched me sign his paper.
After they left, I apologized to Heidi, and we struggled to get through the rest of the day.
That night, I shut down the website, findraredvds.com. The next day, Loren came back with a target letter and pointed to a list of charges that included criminal copyright infringement, mail fraud, wire fraud, etc.
He said something like, "If you plead guilty to one of these charges, the rest of them will go away."
Wow. How generous. That was a short investigation. I called my lawyer.
Six months went by. There were lots of threats from the federal prosecutor, James Moore, and very generous offers to plead guilty, with the sentence supposedly being only house arrest.
Probably.
I declined them all. I asked Heidi several times, perhaps even on day one, "Do you want me to plead guilty? I will do it if they let you go."
She always said, "Let's just find out what's going to happen." She never answered yes, and I asked her for years, even after I was indicted in 2019.
We discussed it a lot, obviously, and as Christmas approached, I started Lostmoviesfound.com. Mainly because I needed the money and legitimately thought I was right because of fair use, orphan works, and implied license. To stop now would be giving in to bullies, and I don't do well with bullies.
I never have.
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