Pornhub Parent MindGeek Sued by 40 ‘Girls Do Porn’ Victims for $40M

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Hopefully today’s sentence will offer them a sense of justice.” Grossman praised prosecutors Joseph Green, Alexandra Foster and Sabrina Feve; FBI Special Agents; and the U.S. Attorney’s Office Victim Witness Unit for their excellent work on this case. This suit comes as Pornhub is trying to fend off allegations that it profits from illegal content. Following an explosive New York Times column on December 4 that accused the company of hosting rape videos and child pornography, the company changed its policies so that only verified users can upload content, and started deleting millions of unverified videos from its platform. Pratt, Wolfe and Garcia were charged each with three counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion, with a possible penalty of fifteen to life, plus a $250,000 fine. Michael James Pratt disappeared in the summer of 2019, just before he was indicted on federal conspiracy and sex trafficking charges stemming from what prosecutors said was a decade-long scheme to con hundreds of teens and young women into appearing in adult videos for the website he owned.

How Michael Pratt allegedly operated GirlsDoPorn

The video was intended to publicly identify the anonymous women who had sued them and was to be released online. The GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys websites generated millions of dollars in revenue from this scheme. For his part, Garcia was paid a commission for each victim that he recruited on top of an hourly wage for his time.

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But the lawsuit alleged that Pratt and Wiederhold couldn’t agree what decision to make, and the attorneys failed to convince Pratt to settle. According to a civil lawsuit, Wiederhold that same year “significantly decreased his involvement with GirlsDoPorn and began devoting most of his time to developing content” for the other site. That same time frame is when prosecutors allege Wiederhold committed the crimes for which he was indicted last month. According to civil lawsuits and bankruptcy proceedings related to the GirlsDoPorn cases, Wiederhold began working for Pratt and GirlsDoPorn in 2007. The GirlsDoPorn website featured mostly college-aged women, but in 2010 Wiederhold began preparing for the launch of a similar “mom” porn site that featured women over 30 years of age. Pratt, a New Zealand native who was added to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list months before his arrest, is believed to still be in Spanish custody awaiting extradition to San Diego, where he’s under indictment on charges of sex trafficking and production of child sexual abuse material.

On January 2, 2020, after a 99-day bench trial, Judge Kevin A. Enright awarded the plaintiffs $13 million in compensatory and punitive damages. The defendants were ordered to remove all videos of plaintiffs from the Internet and cease all distribution of them. During the civil trial, Pratt, Garcia, Wolfe, and several other individuals were criminally indicted for sex trafficking. A federal grand jury indicted the key participants of the porn empire in 2019. At the time, the defendants were embroiled in a lawsuit in San Diego Superior Court filed by 22 women who were victimized by the conspiracy.

“This defendant lured one victim after another with fake modelling ads, false promises and deceptive front companies, ultimately devolving to threats to coerce these women into making sex videos,” said Acting US Attorney Randy Grossman in a statement issued at the time of his conviction. Pornhub’s parent company has settled a lawsuit brought by 50 women who said they were victims of a sex-trafficking operation. In 2019, a Maryland appellate court found 6-1 that child pornography laws apply when a teen is both the subject and sender of sexually explicit media. Under the ruling, where the judicial panel encouraged lawmakers to change the law, the appellate court upheld a lower court’s decision where a 16-year-old girl was convicted as her own pornographer. In October, Pornhub’s parent company settled a lawsuit brought by 50 women who said they were victims of the sex-trafficking operation. GirlsDoPorn producer Ruben Andre Garcia was sentenced in the summer to 20 years in federal prison for coercing women into appearing in sex videos.

That video remained up, according to the complaint, until the FBI’s indictment. The plaintiffs allege that Mindgeek may have received “dozens, if not hundreds” of similar requests from Girls Do Porn victims. In January, a judge ordered the operators of the GirlsDoPorn studio had to pay $12.7m for lying to women about how their videos would be used. MindGeek, which owns adult streaming site Pornhub, is being sued for $80m by a group of 40 women that claim the company profited off of videos depicting them being trafficked by a company called “GirlsDoPorn.” But they were uploaded to GirlsDoPorn’s subscription-based amateur porn website, and clips were shared on some of the world’s most popular free-to-view adult websites.

• Shortly after being filmed, in each of these women’s cases, the footage reportedly ended up on major porn sites accompanied by their real names and personal information.
• Garcia, the actor who had sex with the women in the videos, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
• The attached affidavit, detailing Special Agent Lana K. Sabata’s investigation, includes information and statements uncovered during the Jane Does’ civil trial as the source of some of the state’s evidence against Pratt and the others.
• A hearing has been set for Thursday to discuss whether the 41-year-old should be released on bail.

Further, he ordered the defendants to take down the women’s sex videos and take steps to get them off other porn sites they don’t control but allowed to post clips, ads or entire films. When victims expressed hesitation, Garcia directed other young women to contact the victims and falsely reassure them that the videos would not be posted online and that none of the victims’ friends, families, colleagues or classmates would find out. Young women were selected as references, because Garcia, Pratt and Matthew Wolfe believed the victims were more likely to believe other young women over Garcia or Pratt. The references were paid a fee for each victim they attempted to recruit, with additional compensation for victims who agreed to film a video.