Texas- North Texas is proud of its many entrepreneurs and business success stories.

One it may not want to claim, however, is pornography.

The Dallas area is home to one of the five biggest pornography retailers in the nation. A man claiming to be a religious scholar has built a business based on erotica. He may be headed to jail, but he’s not there yet. On a busy thoroughfare in East New Orleans, a dilapidated windowless building advertises that it never closes. State documents indicate it’s the home of Trinity Christians of America, but the sign above tells a different story: this is an adult video store.

“It’s about the exploitation of human greed,” said a Dallas undercover officer who helped in a six-year investigation of what might be called an erotic empire. “It demoralizes a lot of people.”

At the heart of that empire is 62-year-old John Kenneth Coil of Highland Village. He used to be a practicing lawyer, but then discovered how much money can be made selling pornography.

“Everybody says it’s lucrative,” Coil told News 8. “It’s just like any other business; it’s just a lot of work … it’s what’s left over after everything’s said and done.”

Coil’s work built a ten-state network of pornography retailers, spanning the south, midwest and west. Last month, federal agents seized more than $8 million worth of his property after Coil pleaded guilty to a $4.5 million tax evasion charge.

Dallas County prosecutor Tim Gallagher led the investigation. He said Coil has succeeded through clever camouflage.

“He had numerous shell corporations to move money from one corporation to another in fraudulent transactions,” Gallagher said.

“I’ve always looked at this as a war,” Coil said. “It’s been going on for thousands of years.”

Coil said the war is about religion, of which pornography is a part.

“The Bible is full of pornography,” he said.

Religion, he said, may have been the motive behind the firebombing of one of his stores in Houston last spring. One man died in the fire, and an arson investigation is still under way.

The store stocked a movie called “The Sex Life of the Prophet Mohammed,” which Coil said offended Muslims. Coil said he made the film as a patriotic response to the 9/11 attacks on New York.

However, Coil often uses religion as a loophole. He admits he used the name Trinity Christians in Louisiana simply to get around the law.

When asked if he basically incorporated as a church to get around the law, Coil replied, “that would be a true statement.”

Those loopholes can generate big money – in some cases, $2,000 to $7,000 a week according to investigators.

A Coil store had two components. One, a retail store which sold tapes, CDs and videotapes. Stores buy the materials for as little as $2.50 per unit and sell them for as much as $50 each. The other part of the store is an arcade, which can be even more lucrative. In the arcade, customers buy tokens for hard cash and put them into video machines which play a minute or so of video for each token.

“I wouldn’t say (the arcade) makes more profit on the bottom line,” Coil said. “It makes more profit for the dollar spent.”

A movie called Nympho Bride was one of those in the inventory, and the basis of an obscenity charge against Coil.

“It depicted patently offensive sexual conduct,” Gallagher said.

Coil did not contest the obscenity charges, but said he never saw the movie. He said he’s simply selling something people want.

“People have to make themselves happy,” Coil said. “We present a product that people use to make themselves happy.”

Undercover officers who investigated Coil’s operations from the inside said the stores were more than just pornography merchants.

“They would allow prostitution to occur in the parking lot – they would overlook it,” said one officer.

“It’s one of the scariest places I’ve ever been,” said another. “There’s a constant stream of predators driving through the parking lot, and prostitutes and drug dealers.”

John Kenneth Coil still operates pornography stores in Texas and six other states. He has pleaded guilty in his tax evasion case, but said he will appeal his tax case. He expects those appeals to take ten years.

“I am as bad as anyone in the United States, and I am as good as anyone in the United States,” Coil said. “I’m all people.”