Former iBill Mogul Galanis Pleads Guilty to Securities Fraud

NEW YORK—Jason Galanis—who was formerly with the troubled-now-defunct company iBill and son of John Peter Galanis, a con man in his own right—pleaded guilty Thursday in a federal court in New York to securities fraud and other charges. The charges stemmed from Galanis’ involvement between 2009 and 2011 with the publicly traded company Gerova Financial Group Ltd. Federal prosecutors claimed Galanis was the ringleader of a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme that acquired shares of the company and then manipulated the market by cashing out. His sentencing for the plea is scheduled for December. In 2004, Galanis—who hails from Los Angeles—co-led a group with iBill’s former CEO Garrett Bender in buying iBill from Intercept Payment Solutions, which originally purchased the credit card processing company in 2002. Reports at the time said Galanis’ father had a “heavy if not controlling hand on Jason’s businesses, which have been involved in the spectacular blowup of a colorado bank and millions in losses for commodity giant Cargill.” But those reports didn’t stop Forbes magazine from publishing a feature on him and dubbing him “Porn’s New King.” The 46-year-old Galanis and iBill have a lengthy, complicated and shady history in adult, which AVN covered here, here and here. Galanis’ father was a financier in the 1970s and 1980s who became a notorious white collar criminal who was tried and sentenced in 1988 to 27 years in federal prison. In 2001, he was released from prison on a work release program and disappeared.  The younger Galanis also was charged with cheating a Native American tribe and investors out of $60 million, but he has pleaded not guilty to that charge.