Jacob Brotman was identified as one of the main players in the Tijuana bible trade in Jay Gertzman's "Bookleggers and Smuthounds", and he had previously been arrested in a similar raid on a Lower East Side loft reported in the New York City papers in 1936 which produced a large haul of bibles, erotic fiction "readers", pornographic playing cards, and nude photos, along with cutting and binding equipment and an expensive modern printing press which police could not confiscate because it turned out to be leased.