Pornhub’s parent company has agreed to pay more than $1.8 million to resolve a criminal probe alleging it profited from sex trafficking through its hosting of videos produced by San Diego-based GirlsDoPorn.com.
In a deferred prosecution agreement reached between the company and federal prosecutors in New York, Aylo Holdings S.A.R.L. admitted to accepting money it knew or should have known originated from sex-trafficking operations.
GirlsDoPorn’s owners and operators have faced criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits in San Diego over the alleged coercion of women who say they were forced into making videos or believed they were appearing in videos that would be distributed to private owners, yet were published online without their knowledge or consent.
Prosecutors say Aylo received numerous requests from women over the years to remove their videos from Pornhub and similar sites.
Though the women told the company “that they had been lied to and defrauded into making these videos and that the videos were posted on Pornhub.com without their consent,” the company did not remove all the videos or verify whether all the videos on its sites were made with consent, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Prosecutors say that as the allegations against GirlsDoPorn intensified, Aylo removed GirlsDoPorn’s channel from its websites in late 2019, but it didn’t remove another channel known to be operated by GirlsDoPorn’s owners for more than a year afterward.
On the same day the agreement was announced, attorneys on both sides of a related federal lawsuit in San Diego told a judge they planned to participate in a mediation session outside of court. They asked the judge to suspend all hearings in the case at least until they meet with the mediator, a retired judge, in February.
That lawsuit was filed in October on behalf of 62 women who claimed that PornHub and Aylo’s other free porn sites published videos of them that were the result of sex trafficking through force, fraud and coercion. A similar 2020 lawsuit filed in San Diego by 60 women ended in a settlement, the terms of which were not disclosed.
The $1,844,952.83 Aylo has agreed to pay in the New York deferred prosecution agreement will go to the U.S. government, while Aylo has also agreed to provide additional money to GirlsDoPorn victims whose images were posted on Aylo platforms, but have not already received compensation.
An independent monitor will assess Aylo’s compliance with the agreement for a period of three years and, if the agreement is breached, the company will be prosecuted for engaging in an unlawful monetary transaction, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The charge will be dismissed after three years if Aylo complies with the agreement.
“Motivated by profit, Aylo Holdings knowingly enriched itself by turning a blind eye to the concerns of victims who communicated to the company that they were deceived and coerced into participating in illicit sexual activity,” FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge James Smith in a statement.
In a statement, Aylo said it “deeply regrets” hosting any content produced by GirlsDoPorn. The company said GirlsDoPorn provided written consent forms signed by the women, but Aylo was unaware the forms were obtained through fraud and coercion.
Aylo says it has since developed an improved internal program utilizing both human moderation and AI software to verify illegal content is not uploaded and/or disseminated.
“We were troubled to learn that a production company used criminal means to produce its content and submitted consent documentation that we now know was obtained by fraud and coercion,” the company said in a statement. “We must be vigilant to stop those seeking to use our platforms illegally, and to respond to ever-changing threats and challenges.”
In San Diego, the prosecution of GirlsDoPorn’s founder, Michael James Pratt, remains pending. Pratt was arrested in Spain last year after more than three years on the lam but has yet to be extradited to the United States.
Several others have pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, including website operator Matthew Isaac Wolfe, who awaits sentencing next month, and producer and porn actor Ruben Andre Garcia, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
GirlsDoPorn was also sued locally by 22 women, who were awarded nearly $13 million by a San Diego Superior Court judge at the conclusion of a trial.
Staff writer Alex Riggins contributed to this report.
