A former consultant for a late-1990s adult entertainment company has spoken publicly about his role in the distribution of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s private home video, saying he now regrets his part in the scandal that upended the couple’s lives.
Cort St. George told A&E’s new documentary series, Secrets of Celebrity Sex Tapes, that he sold the videotape to porn entrepreneur and Internet Entertainment Group (IEG) founder Seth Warshavsky in 1997 after a friend showed him a copy. The videotape was recorded in 1995 while Anderson and Lee were on vacation at Lake Mead and later stolen from a safe in the couple’s home, St. George said.
"I was flabbergasted by what we saw," St. George said in the documentary. "I just started working as a consultant at IEG in Seattle and I said this guy will probably want this video." He said he called Warshavsky and suggested the video might fetch $10,000. St. George added that he later learned Warshavsky wanted his signature on a contract to have someone to blame if the situation escalated.
Warshavsky’s legal team provided Anderson and Lee with what St. George described as a "limited contract." In archival footage included in the A&E series, Anderson said she signed the agreement because she felt pressured a week before she was due to give birth. St. George said the videotape was then streamed on IEG’s sites and later sold in retail outlets, prompting Anderson and Lee to sue.
In 2001, a court ordered IEG to pay Anderson and Lee $740,000 each. St. George told the documentary that, to his knowledge, the couple never received those funds. He also said the pair did not profit from the tape and that they turned down offers to monetize it. Warshavsky died in October 2024 from an unreported illness.
St. George expressed remorse in the A&E interview, saying he wants to "clear my conscience" even though he called his own involvement "very little." "I feel like I'm constantly wanting to clear my conscience even though I had very little to do with the whole thing," he said. "I just happened to be at the wrong place at the right time. I feel bad about being involved in it."
Anderson has spoken about the leak in recent years. In a 2023 interview on CBS Sunday Morning, she described the videotape as made by "two crazy naked people in love," and said the recordings were never intended for public release. Anderson told the program that she was so devastated by the breach of privacy that, had she not been a mother, she believed she might have taken her own life. She and Lee, who divorced in 1998, share two sons, Brandon, 29, and Dylan, 27.
The tape was created in 1995, and St. George said it had been taken after workers reportedly dismissed from a job by Lee stole a safe containing the tape. Anderson and Lee did not realize their private video had been stolen until January 1996, by which time copies had already proliferated.
Secrets of Celebrity Sex Tapes premiered Monday on A&E. The series explores a number of unauthorized releases involving public figures and includes interviews with individuals who say they were involved in obtaining or distributing the recordings, as well as archival material and interviews with the people whose private material was made public.
Legal battles stemming from the Anderson–Lee tape helped shape early internet and copyright litigation involving unauthorized online distribution of private recordings. The 2001 judgment against IEG was among several high-profile cases in the era that prompted discussion of how courts and lawmakers should respond to the spread of sexually explicit material without consent.
St. George’s appearance in the documentary adds a first-person account to the long-running public record of the episode, which remains a notable example of the intersection of celebrity, privacy and the rise of online adult content in the late 1990s. He told A&E he decided to speak now in part to set the factual record straight and to express remorse for the personal consequences the leak had for Anderson and Lee.