'Girls Gone Wild' Founder Charged with Assault, False Imprisonment

Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis and his bodyguard were charged with misdemeanor false imprisonment stemming from a January run-in with three women after a college graduation party at a Hollywood club, the Los Angeles City Attorney's office announced today.

Francis, 38, accompanied by an attorney, surrendered to Los Angeles police at the Pacific Station on Monday evening. He was booked and released on $50,000 bail, with his arraignment scheduled for Sept. 16.

He and his bodyguard/driver, Vagram Gegdzhyan, are accused of taking three women to one of Francis' homes, where a fight broke out and Francis allegedly slammed one woman's head against a tile floor, according to the city attorney's office. Francis was charged with three counts of false imprisonment and single counts of dissuading a witness from reporting and assault causing great bodily injury.

Gegdzhyan, 34, was charged with three counts of false imprisonment, and single counts of dissuading a witness, impersonation of a public officer with intimidation and fraudulently using a badge. All of the charges are misdemeanors.

According to prosecutors, Francis was at the Supperclub nightclub in Hollywood on Jan. 29, and at the end of the night, he led a woman to his limousine. Two other women who apparently believed they were being taken to their cars also got in, prosecutors said. En route to Francis' home, Gegdzhyan allegedly showed a sheriff's badge and refused to let the women out of the limousine, according to Deputy City Attorney Mitchell Fox.

At Francis' gated home, a fight broke out, with Francis allegedly trying to drag one of the women away from the other two, grabbing her by the throat and hair and hitting her head on the floor, according to the city attorney's office.

The women were eventually escorted off the property and told that no one would call or pay for a taxi if they reported what happened to police, Fox said. But on the taxi ride back to their cars, at least one of the women called 911 and made a police report.

If convicted, Francis faces up to five years in jail and/or $13,000 in fines, while Gegdzhyan faces up to six years in jail and/or $7,500 in fines.

Francis is no stranger to trouble. Having amassed a fortune is his 20s, he was arrested in Florida in 2003 on suspicion of racketeering and drug trafficking. Most of those charges were eventually dropped, but Francis paid a $1.6 million fine. In 2009, he was ordered by a federal judge in Los Angeles to pay thousands of dollars in fines and restitution for filing false tax returns and bribing Nevada jail workers in exchange for food while he was incarcerated.

— City News Service