Reno, Nev.

THE multimillionaire creator of “Girls Gone Wild” sits in a jail visiting room here, wearing a uniform of orange shirt and gray pants and looking pale but rested from eight months of incarceration. He talks to a visitor through glass, often yelling, sometimes tapping on the glass with his index finger for emphasis, railing into a handset against “evil” and “vengeful” government officials and vowing to sue them all.

“Enough is enough,” he spits out. “I am not a criminal.”

Joe Francis, 34, has long been a polarizing figure, having made his riches enticing young women at Spring Break locations (many of them drunk) to bare their breasts for the cameras for his popular videos. He has not been scoring brownie points by calling local officials in Florida  where Spring Break 2003 in Panama City Beach went terribly wrong for him  “Nazis” and “cockroaches.”

But, stuck in jail in Reno, Mr. Francis is now desperately trying to drum up public sympathy, if not win release, to expose how unfairly he believes authorities have treated him. For the last two and a half months, he has taken out ads, sent out news releases, appeared on dozens of radio and TV talk shows and used a Web site, www.meetjoefrancis.com, to relate his convoluted story while his lawyers file motions charging prosecutorial misconduct and ask for investigations.

And as he goes about trying to transform his image from soft-porn entrepreneur to victim of vindictive officials, support has come from unusual quarters. His most vocal allies are not the Hollywood A-listers who have vacationed at his Mexico estate, but conservative radio hosts and their listeners, who suspect government shenanigans.