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In episode four of Pam and Tommy we meet Seth Warshavsky, as played by Eighth Grade and The White Lotus’ Fred Hechinger. Warshavsky owned Internet Entertainment Group (IEG). The name was both a euphemism and a pointed reference to the culture it boomed in.
IEG made and distributed porn and live sex lines over the internet in the Nineties, and Warshavsky was the controversial mogul at its greasy heart. You’re going to see a lot of big numbers in the Warshavsky story; there’s some doubt as to how true they are, though. Warshavsky liked to talk very big.
“He hopes to sell art and music over the Net in the future,” a Seattle Weekly feature about him ran, “and when high-speed TV-quality video hits the home computer, he’ll begin around-the-world transmission of picture-perfect live sex from Seattle.”
In one office, close to the city’s Pike Place Market and the cultural hub around Seattle Art Museum, Warshavsky co-ordinated the IEG empire. In a converted warehouse at the other end of First Avenue, women performed stripteases in front of webcams for subscribers. By the mid-2000s, 150 people worked for IEG, and profits hit $75 million a year.
Born in New York in 1973, Warshavsky got started in the sex business as a 19-year-old. He borrowed $7000 and along with a friend started up a sex line: 1-800-GET-SOME. After grossing more than $60 million in just a few years, Warshavsky made the jump to internet porn in January 1996.
Clublove.com – originally launched as Candyland.com, but swiftly renamed after Hasbro sued over copyright infringement on behalf of its Candy Land board game – was the first of what became more than 3000 sex sites under IEG’s control.
IEG also traded in sex tapes of the rich and famous, and the Seattle Weekly names Jerry Springer, Poison singer Bret Michaels and Kelsey Grammer as among those Warshavsky either intended to sell videos of or to get his mitts on.
Warshavsky always liked a grubby stunt too. He offered any sitting congressmen a 99 percent discount at a brothel in Nevada, and had a standing $3 million offer to Monica Lewinsky if she’d agree to pose nude and talk about her relationship with Bill Clinton. He even set up a website about Pope John Paul II’s visit to St Louis in 1999, and covered it with sex jokes and links to porn sites. The Vatican was less than amused.
So when IEG’s biggest break came in 1997, with the distribution of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s sex tape, it was extremely on brand. An attempt by Anderson and Lee to block its release failed, and it duly went viral.
“It got stolen, and some psycho decided to mass produce it and put it all over the world,” Lee told Fox Files in 1998. “I’m horrified. It’s not cool.”
Warshavsky wasn’t unduly bothered. The LA Times reported IEG as grossing $45 million in 1998. Was Warshavsky remorseful, a TV reporter asked him in 1999? “No. I don’t feel like we’ve done anything negative. We’ve provided some really hot stories and some really hot content that there’s been a huge demand for.”
The way Warshavsky told it, he simply happened to chance on the enormous goldmine that porn represented at the dawn of the internet era.
“Adult content just happens to be the product that I sell,” he told Fox Files in 1999. "If there was the same demand for widgets or toast ovens, I’d be selling widgets or toast ovens.”
IEG tumbled into financial troubles at the start of the Noughties. The FBI and IRS started to investigate allegations that IEG had been double- and triple-charging clients for its services.
“My mother’s proud of me,” Warshavsky told ABC News during his mid-Nineties pomp. “I’m a successful businessman.”
Where is Seth Warshavsky now?
Warshavsky fled to Bangkok, Thailand in 2001, a year before Anderson and Lee successfully sued him for $1.5 million (though they never received the full amount, as Warshavsky's company was shut down by that point). It's thought that he went on to work in telecommunications, and still resides there.
