Rand Gauthier: who was man who stole Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s sex tape - and where is he now?

Disney+ true-crime biopic Pam & Tommy follows two narratives. One sees Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee dealing with the emotional and legal consequences of the theft of their honeymoon sex tape; the other tracks Rand Gauthier’s theft of the sex tape and attempts to monetise it.

Gauthier, played by Seth Rogen in Pam & Tommy, was an electrician/carpenter hired by Tommy Lee to renovate his home – when Lee refused to pay Gauthier for his work, Gauthier decided to rob Lee to try and make his money back.

Looking for jewellery, Gauthier found the sex tape, and set about trying to sell that instead.

Here’s everything you need to know about Rand Gauthier.

How did Rand Gauthier meet Tommy Lee?

Gauthier was a carpenter and electrician working in Tommy Lee’s house. Lee employed him to renovate his home, but the volatile rockstar racked up huge bills he refused to pay.

Lee soon fired Gauthier and the rest of the construction team, and kept all their tools and equipment as well – when Gauthier went to collect his equipment, Lee held him at gunpoint and threatened to kill him.

That incident is what prompted Gauthier to rob Tommy Lee.

How did Rand Gauthier steal the sex tape, and how did he try to sell it?

Gauthier was the person who installed Tommy Lee’s security cameras, so he knew how to deconnect them – he also knew they weren’t particularly high resolution, so if he wore a white blanket and crawled on all fours he’d look like Lee’s dog.

Gauthier broke into Lee and Anderson’s home, and stole their safe, dragging it to his van. He took it to a forest to break into it, and found jewellery, guns, and a Hi8 tape.

Hi8 was quite an obscure video format at the time, which most people wouldn’t have been able to play it – Gauthier, however, had a number of friends in the adult film industry from his own brief involvement in it, and took the tape to producer Milton Ingley.

Ingley played the tape, and the two realised it was a private video of Anderson and Lee having sex on their honeymoon. They took it to a number of different entertainment companies (adult and otherwise) to try to sell it, but no would accept it, fearing legal consequences.

Gauthier proposed they sell the tape via mail order online, starting an anonymous website that people could buy the tape from individually. They took a loan from a local Mafia boss to fund the initial start up costs (making copies of the tape, posting them, etc).

What happened to Rand Gauthier?

Gauthier, in the end, didn’t actually make a great deal of money from selling the sex tape – it wasn’t long before other people were bootlegging it and selling it themselves, undercutting his own operation. (For obvious reasons, he couldn’t really take out a copyright strike either.)

Soon, his partner in crime Milton Ingley abandoned him, fleeing to Amsterdam with most of their money. To pay off his debts to the local Mafia boss that financed them, Gauthier started to work as a collector for the mob – he would throw acid in people’s faces and break their collarbones (which is something Pam & Tommy tones down when it eventually depicts it).

Eventually, the Mafia boss died of cancer. Milton Ingley returned to California, and Rand Gauthier moved away, further along the coast. He focuses full time on his electrical work, and you can actually find his work profile online to hire him as an electrician if you live in the California area.

Pam & Tommy is actually based on a Rolling Stone article written in 2014. The article extensively interviews Gauthier and his associates – Anderson and Lee weren’t available for comment – and makes for a really interesting read. You can find it here.

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