Former XPW Owners sentenced to prison
Published July 1st, 2009 in Headlines
PWInsider.com is reporting that former XPW Wrestling Promotion owner Rob Zicari (known as Rob Black) and his wife, former XPW performer Janet Romano (known as Lizzie Borden) were both sentenced to one year and one day in a federal prison along with two additional years of supervised probation.
The couple plead guilty last March to one count of conspiracy to distribute obscene materials. Zicari also entered a guilty plea at the same time for one count on behalf of his now defunct adult video company, Extreme Associates Inc. The pleas were made part of an agreement between the defendants and prosecutors which saw nine counts of violating federal obscenity statuettes, and having them dropped.
The couple, and their company Extreme Associates Inc. were indicted in August 2003 for selling pornography through the U.S. Postal system and through the internet after a lengthy investigation done by federal prosecutors. At the time, they were accused, “of sending obscene movies to a Post Office box in Pittsburgh area. The suspects also allegedly sent obscene tapes and DVDs to a local wholesaler and transmitted obscene footage on the Extreme Associates Website.” Before pleading guilty, the couple were facing 50 years in prison and up to a $5 million fine.
Black promoted Xtreme Pro Wrestling (XPW) from 1999-2003 in California, using his adult video company as the parent company. The promotion was described as a west version of the original Extreme Championship Wrestling. Black used original ECW talent with Paul Heymen before the two had a falling out. At one point, XPW expanded to the former ECW arena preventing other promotions from using the venue for shows. The company had moved away from Philadelphia by February 2003, and ventured into the Pittsburgh market and drew decent crowds by the way of their booker at the time, Shane Douglas locally promoting shows and still running regular events in Los Angeles.
This all changed in April 2003 when Black’s company was raided by federal authorities after receiving materials that were ordered from his video company that had been sent to Pennsylvania. Once the federal charges were filed, the promotion closed, but Black continued to maintain his website for a period of time airing several taped XPW pay-per-view shows..
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