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American male sent to prosecutors in uncensored porn case

Michael Tharp
Michael Tharp was prosecuted at the Tokyo Disrict Court on Thursday for the digital distribution of content deemed obscene

TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Thursday sent a male American national employed at a website site that offers uncensored pornographic material from Japan to prosecutors for digital distribution of content deemed obscene, reports TBS News (Mar. 24).

Michael Tharp, a 34-year-old employee of the management company for site Caribbeancom.com, was sent to prosecutors at the Tokyo District Court for allegedly participating in the upload of content to the site in which genitalia was not obscured.

According to previous reports, the material was filmed at a studio in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward on February 2, 2016. It was distributed on Caribbeancom.com on August 17.

Police had previously charged actor Jo Oshima, one other actor, former actress Yui Nishikawa and two persons with adult video (AV) production company Declare in the case, according to Nippon News Network (Mar. 24). All five persons were not prosecuted due to a “small degree of participation in the crime,” the court ruled.

According to a previous report, Tharp worked on compressing the video data from the shoot prior to distribution on the site. Police apprehended the American in the village of Onna, Okinawa Prefecture on March 3 after learning he was staying in the country.

The servers for Caribbeancom.com, which bills itself as offering “uncensored” content, are hosted overseas. Boasting approximately 300,000 members, the site includes about 4,300 films featuring around 370 Japanese AV actresses.