A real estate and adult film mogul famed for degrading women from behind the camera—and for cultivating ties to prominent Los Angeles-area pols behind the scenes—faces up to a decade of prison and probation, as well as millions in forfeitures and fines after confessing to hiding his true wealth on federal filings.
Mark Handel, known in the porn world by his moniker Khan Tusion, admitted in California Central District Court late on Thursday to concealing his earnings from the feds and his creditors alike in bankruptcy and tax documents filed last decade.
The plea deal, crafted earlier this month, outlines how Handel formed a company called DTMM Construction—an abbreviation for “Don’t Touch My Money”—in his wife’s name so as to hide income from multiple developments in and around the City of Angels, and how he knowingly failed to report roughly $7 million to the Internal Revenue Service between 2010 and 2017.
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Handel’s lawyers declined to comment for this story. He now not only will have to pay back taxes, but cough up a minimum $500,000 fine and the proceeds of a $3.5 million property sale. He could spend up to eight years in prison, and an additional three years on supervised release.
At his zenith in the 2000s, Handel was a major bundler for Democratic Party politicians with allies both in Sacramento and Los Angeles City Hall—including now-Rep. Tony Cardenas and Sen. Alex Padilla, who both served in the state and municipal legislatures and like Handel came out of the San Fernando Valley.
But Handel also lorded over corners of the Valley where elected officials fear to tread. As Khan Tusion, he cranked out pornographic franchises with titles like Meat Holes and Butt-Licking Anal Whores, which notoriously featured women beaten, screamed at, spat upon, stepped on, and even choked into unconsciousness. Performers who worked with him maintain that Tusion’s glee in cruelty wasn’t a put on.
A performer who used the name Regan Starr described to The Daily Beast in an interview last year how the director kept shooting as she cried for mercy under the blows of her male co-star.
“His eyes got really big and he got excited,” Starr recalled. “It was like he was in a trance, a pleasure trance kind of thing. I’d never seen anything like it.”
Khan Tusion’s reputation long outlasted the end of his blue movie career in 2010, and the die-off of the DVD-centric adult industry in the Internet era, according to the directors of Pariah, an upcoming documentary about Handel.
“They would call him the ‘boogeyman of porn,’ ‘the Freddie Krueger of porn’,” said Lucas Heyne, who is co-directing the feature with Sara Gardephe. “He was known for being one of the most verbally abusive and physically abusive porn directors that’s ever existed.”
The federal case against Handel has nothing to do with either his political or pornographic activities, though the complaint did allude to his fundraising work. There is no evidence the politicians he supported were aware of his obscene alter ego, which he labored to conceal through the use of a voice distorter and a refusal to show his face on film.
Handel is set to face sentencing in November.
