How a fan boy writer — the journalistic equivalent of a mope — decided to pass himself off as an adult industry publicist and producer.
Setting aside the astoundingly poor quality of his work, the personal and professional behavior of adult industry hanger-on and self-styled “publicist” Jordan Potter a.k.a. Don Juan DeMarko has been the subject of rumor for over a year.
Spurred by the pleas of several of his former clients and associates, MikeSouth.com recently undertook an investigation into Potter’s practices. After interviews with firsthand witnesses, many of whom supplemented their testimony with sometimes voluminous documentation, the portrait that emerges of Don Juan DeMarko is excruciatingly clear: he is, at a minimum, a habitual liar and narcissist, who suffers from serious substance abuse issues.
To enrich himself, Potter, 43, has bragged about relationships and business connections that are, upon examination, either non-existent or dramatically exaggerated.
He has continually asserted, for instance, that he is an AVN Awards voter — a member of AVN’s nominations/voting committee.
The AVN voter claim is included in his X.com bio, and thus an integral part of his brand.
Every single performer we interviewed for this report told an identical tale: one of the center points of Potter’s DeMarko PR pitch was his alleged position and influence vis-a-vis the AVN Awards process.
However, AVN has confirmed that DeMarko “most definitely is not” an AVN Awards voter.
This makes logical sense because, without commenting on their assessment of his level of expertise or the quality of his work, it is easy to understand that a publicist, who is paid by clients to promote their careers, would not be an objective voter.
The Pipe Dream
Jordan Potter has claimed to be an industry insider for many years, that he owns or owned a home in Denver, and that he takes care of his parents.
In reality, he is a morbidly obese 40-something porn superfan who lived in his luckless parents’ house until, as one knowledgeable witness put it, “they threw him out last summer.”
The hapless Potter found his way into the adult industry through Dominic Ace of EMM Report, c. 2016, attending fan conventions, snapping pics and doing write-ups. Suddenly, Potter was living the sweaty dream of every chronic mastubator: he was at last a fan boy with a press badge.
The rush of having gained the illusion of credibility, access and influence went immediately to his head. He created a personal mythos, and adopted the name of a literary character, fictional Latin libertine Don Juan.
The choice is more telling than even Potter might recognize: the fictional Don Juan is a liar and unrepentant manipulator who falsely promises women marriage to coerce them into sex.
Untethered from his darkened room, strewn with the remnants of his recent fast food binges, Potter’s demeanor was by turns brash and unctious. The bully and the wounded victim. The braggart and the floridly complimentary suck-up. The deceiver and the gaslighter. These became the poles between which he would oscillate, in order to manipulate others or backpedal.
Because “Don Juan DeMarko” was a fiction, his long desired pipe dream, Potter allowed himseld to become unbound from objective truth. And like all liars, he would eventually become a prisoner of his own falsehoods.
A question of character
It is said that actions descend from intentions, and intentions descend from character.
Several individuals who spoke or messaged with MikeSouth.com pointed to Potter’s distressing personal behavior. The inescapable conclusion to be gleaned from these testimonies, and the documentary evidence they have provided, is that Potter is not fully in control of himself.
One former DeMarko client told MikeSouth.com that Potter “would definitely be wasted when he would call. He was high AF at AVN’s. I saw a sudden increase in drug use and drinking when he moved to Nevada. It got to the point we were rewriting the press he was sending because it didn’t make any sense and was shitty.”
Other witnesses made similar observations about Potter’s behavior over the past year.
“If there is a substance in front of Jordan, whether it’s alcohol or drugs, he will consume it until it is all gone,” noted Nevada-based industry multi-hyphenate, Bryan Canon.
In August 2024, after relocating to Las Vegas from the Denver home of his parents, DeMarko moved in with an emtionally troubled dancer and erstwhile performer. The relationship has been described as extremely toxic by observers who spoke with MikeSouth.com, and just before Thanksgiving, Potter found himself unhomed.
In desperate straits, he was offered help by Canon in the form of an invitation to rent a room at his home in Pahrump for $700/month. The house contains a camera system, including obvious cameras at the entry point and throughout the residence, both for reasons of home security and because shoots sometimes take place there (with non-residents coming in and out). Upon moving in, Potter was made aware that the house was wired for both sound and picture.
Canon told MikeSouth.com that he soon realized Potter, who insisted on bellowing during cell phone conversations made with the audio set to ‘speaker,’ would customarily lie to people about himself and his connections “to win their trust.”
Canon, who is a retired U.S. Army veteran, caught Potter in one particularly “offensive lie,” which Canon refers to as a case of “stolen valor.”
Potter has claimed to be a U.S. Army veteran who served in Afghanistan in the “101st Armored Division.” This sounded odd to Canon, whose understanding was that “there were no U.S. tanks in Afghanistan, because of how the Soviets had fought there. Our ground approach was ‘hearts and minds.'”
According to online sources, the 101st Armored Division was never deployed there.
Canon called Potter on the lie, and he was forced to admit that he had never served.
In an exchange caught on audio that was shared with MikeSouth.com, which Canon dates as January 19 (and on which Potter is clearly aware of the existence of other recordings), Potter changes his story. Here he asserts that he “tried” to serve in the Army “because my father was in it and my grandfather was in it,” but that he could not make it through boot camp.
Potter exclaims, “You’re a failure when you do that … and who wants to tell everybody that you got washed out?”
Canon told us, “he still tries to maintain that he went to boot camp and tried but failed . . . . I told him, produce a DD Form 214. . . . Any recruit that hits the ground from the first day of reception until the last day of basic training who gets put out, gets a DD 214. It’s an Entry Level Separation. He can’t provide one because he never went.”
Potter deflects throughout; his tone is unrepentant and at times defiant and accusatory, like a bully — with regard to the stolen valor, his argument comes down to: “what’s the big deal?”
Tangled
By then, Potter had begun finding it increasingly difficult to extricate himself from his own web of brags and lies. Some centered on alleged intimate relationships with performers, including his own clients.
“I always made sure I was never alone with him.”
Here is the testimony of one former client:
So I heard it from A LOT of girls that Don and I were “dating” this is completely false. We never dated, the girls and I laugh about it because we all knew it wasn’t true. I started keeping him at an arms distance after that rumor popped up. Something just felt weird. I always made sure I was never alone with him.
He came on a set with me one time. I thought it was just to make the introduction, the photographer and I hit it off and Don didn’t leave. He wasn’t doing BTS [behind the scenes shooting] or helping or anything. Just sitting there. We got through the photos and then he still stayed for the Solo Scene and was just there. I just focused on the camera man.
I found out right before XBIZ that one night at a party, after I passed out, he tried to sleep with me, and another guy stopped it. He was telling people that we did fuck, which we never have. I’ve never done anything, period, with him.
Multiple witnesses confirm to MikeSouth.com that Potter bragged about having had a sexual relationship with this client. These assertions are confirmed by contemporaneous text messaging between other performers, including this (now former) client. A further text messaging thread between Potter and the client shows him again attempting to backpedal.
Text messaging provided to this site by a different female client shows Potter “love bombing” her with saccharine compliments and either referring to her by her real first name or employing cutesy nicknames.
Bait and Switch
Evidence shows that Potter would often offer potential clients and associates access to big name adult stars and prestige brands. “He’d always dangle little carrots at me but none of them ever really materialized,” one former associate relayed to us. “He also told me that he could get me onto Elevated X for $10/month because he ‘knew the owners.'”
Yet another female client referred to Potter’s pattern of overpromising and under-delivering, in a DM exchange with this site:
I was [] more or less promised that he would get me an agent, to represent me, and that never happened. Again, promises in this industry are large and never fulfilled so I anticipated the result.I would walk around expo’s so he could introduce me to “big people” he knew in the industry that he was friends with, and most often the convo/introduction was awkward and it was clear these people either didn’t know who he was or didn’t care for him which can be detrimental to a career.One of the reasons I went with him is because he “seemed” to have decent connections. . . .
[Potter] disappeared for a month this fall, and when he resurfaced he had essentially changed his business model and he and his partner were discovered to be involved in some sketchy shoots; promises, and roles (like talent) that were not articulated when I signed.I had a shoot booked and he showed up with strangers to watch the shoot, which I promptly canceled.The reason for them being there and invited to the shoot was to simply watch the scene being filmed.Which is, in my opinion, completely unprofessional.
[H]e even promised to secure shoots with people he knew I wanted to shoot with. . . . [Potter and his partner] wanted me to go in on a business with them to start up a pay site ? The list goes on and on.
Several individuals who spoke with this site said they believed these “business partners” were merely fellow porn fans who had been lured with the promise of being able to have access to a real life porn set, and that this was the true purpose of the “sketchy,” and poorly organized shoots.
Adios Johnny DeMarko
We sincerely hope the penniless Potter will now shamble off, and return to the world of junk food, diabetes and obscurity for which he was fated. If not, we will dutifully expose more material that we have uncovered, including accounts of grotesque behavior at AEE 2025, and further ex-client testimonies.
Reached via DM to give his side of the story, Jordan Potter a.k.a. Don Juan DeMarko refused comment.
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