A story www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=26708 that appeared recently tying gay porn icon Ryan Idol to a charity funds scandal, prompts the following piece:
Alabama [al.com]- John Katopodis [pictured] is adamant about a couple of things:
“There has never been an inappropriate relationship between me and anyone associated with any of the charities in which I’ve been involved,” he said this week. “Furthermore there has never been any payment to anyone for work they didn’t legitimately do.”
Got it.
There has, however, been a long association between Katopodis and legendary gay porn star Ryan Idol, pre-dating by a decade the payments Idol received from Katopodis through two publicly funded Birmingham charities.
It is a relationship that stretches, depending on whom you ask and what records you see, from Los Angeles Superior Court to Rome. It involves a restraining order, a male madam and the sting operation that helped bring him down. It has the pope, JFK Jr. and Elton John.
Bizarre? You got it.
This much is clear: Public money, including a million dollars from Jefferson County, went to charities run by Katopodis, including Computer Help for Kids. Those charities paid Idol — a longtime Katopodis associate — at least $30,000 for computer jobs he was never trained to do.
That’s enough to make it wrong. But lordy, it does get more interesting.
In 1996 Ryan Idol’s longtime manager, David Forest of David Forest Entertainment, filed a civil harassment complaint against Katopodis in Los Angeles, records show.
“He thought I was feeding drugs to Ryan Idol,” said Forest, who was called the male Heidi Fleiss after he went to prison in 1996 for crimes related to a male prostitution ring. “He thought I was in love with Ryan Idol. He started calling and harassing me.”
In a conference call last week with The Birmingham News, Gay Porn Times and Unzipped magazine, Forest said Idol called Katopodis his “godfather” as far back as 1992.
He said Katopodis tried everything he could to take Idol away from drugs, porn and Forest himself.
“He interfered with my management of Ryan Idol because he didn’t want Ryan to be in the Triple-X business.”
That is not in dispute. Nor is the fact that Katopodis worked with LA police to put Forest in prison.
But Katopodis said his interests in Idol — whose real name is Marc Anthony Donais — are purely philanthropic.
“He first came to me on the recommendation of Elton John,” Katopodis said. “Years ago I was invited to a progressive dinner. It started in the basement and moved up until we were finally in Elton John’s penthouse where he served chocolate pianos.”
He said former Atlanta Mayor (and convicted felon) Bill Campbell also asked him to help Idol rebuild his life, as did “another mutual friend — John F. Kennedy Jr.”
So Idol started fixing computers for the foundations. He had no formal computer training, “but he had skills,” Katopodis said.
That made Forest laugh.
“He was a real novice when it came to that,” Forest said. “He was definitely not a computer nerd.”
Attempts to reach Idol and his lawyer — and Elton John’s publicist — failed.