Our law enforcement partners called us in to search Gasca’s apartment and there it all was: things like two video camcorders, a micro-camera built onto a trouser belt, two DVD recorders, the 11 linked VCRs, a stolen Social Security card, and his two diaries, which happily chronicled all the bad things he’d been doing. Burbank police arrested him when he was caught at a screening of The Core. By beating the public release of blockbuster films, he claimed in his diary to be clearing as much as $4,500 a week.įortunately, he had a habit of getting caught. His high-end sound and recording equipment-creating a distinctive green glow-produced extraordinarily good quality master recordings, and he’d rush home to mass produce them on 11 interlinked VCRs then sell them over the Internet. He’d hang around theaters where advance screenings were scheduled.pose as a movie industry insider.find his way into the theater.rig his camera to the arm rest for stability.and start filming when the lights went down. Now he’d come to Hollywood with a special dream: to put himself behind the camera-not to make movies, but to steal them. He’d been convicted of petit larceny and assault with intent to cause serious injury with a weapon after shooting someone in the face with a handgun, and had served time in a New York prison. Meet Johnny Ray Gasca, the so-called “prince of pirates.” This native New Yorker already had a bad track record when he moved to Hollywood in 2002. Just one guy with a digital camcorder, sitting in theaters filming movies. In today’s multi-billion dollar movie pirating enterprises, largely dominated by global criminal networks, he was essentially a lone wolf.
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