Girls Gone Wild Files for Bankruptcy

In what may be a perfect example of "what goes around comes around," Girls Gone Wild has filed for bankruptcy. Founder Joe Francis put his 16-year-old empire under bankruptcy protection yesterday in an effort to keep Las Vegas resort owner Steve Wynn from grabbing any of those assets, the Wall Street Journal reports. Francis owes Wynn millions for slandering him, and that was after he racked up a $2 million gambling debt in 2007. In total, the company's $10.3 million debt to Wynn was listed as its biggest; all told, it says it has roughly $16.3 million in debt and less than $50,000 in assets, reports Bloomberg.

Needless to say, there's some glee over this development. At Gawker, Cord Jefferson writes that it's "the end of an era"—and that it's about time. "Potentially gone for good are those once ubiquitous late-night infomercials, obnoxious, noisy, and lousy with drunk spring breakers whose nipples are pixelated out. If we're lucky, perhaps also gone for good from the public eye is Joe Francis." But it's actually asset-shielding Francis who gets the last laugh, counters Kevin Roose at the Daily Intelligencer. Just today, Francis told TMZ the fiasco won't affect his personal wealth, or even the soft-porn company's future plans. (More Joe Francis stories.)