GirlsDoPorn.Com owner sentenced 27 years for sex trafficking conspiracy

Michael James Pratt FILE photo courtesy of the FBI The owner of the San Diego-based GirlsDoPorn com website which featured pornographic videos of young women who were forced or coerced into appearing in the films under false pretenses was sentenced to years in federal prison Monday Michael James Pratt described by prosecutors as the ringleader in a wide-ranging sex-trafficking conspiracy surrounding the now-defunct website pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking Prosecutors commented the website s operators led women to believe the videos in which they appeared would be distributed only to private customers living outside of the country and that their identities would not be exposed But the goal was constantly to post the videos on the internet as part of the scheme which netted Pratt millions of dollars in profit prosecutors explained Casualties were given false promises by Pratt and other GirlsDoPorn com employees which included reference girls who falsely assured casualties that they had participated in past videos that were never posted online After their videos were posted and proliferated to their family friends and employers numerous of the women noted they pleaded with GirlsDoPorn s leadership to take down their videos but their requests were refused or ignored U S District Judge Janis Sammartino sentenced Pratt to more than the nearly years requested by federal prosecutors due to what she reported was the sheer scope and magnitude of this offense Pratt s sentencing hearing spanned nearly six hours and featured testimonials from almost casualties including the mother of a young woman who died of a drug overdose in the years after her video was issued Casualties who spoke Monday disclosed at least women they knew who appeared in GirlsDoPorn videos have since died from suicide or other causes Various of the women declared they have spent years and countless amounts of money trying to scrub evidence of their videos from the internet with little to no success The scariest part is the internet doesn t forget one woman noted Numerous casualties mentioned those videos were re-posted by people online featuring their full names and other personal identifying information leading to an onslaught of harassment that follows them to this day One woman mentioned that just when she thought she d escaped the specter of the video filmed over a decade ago screenshots of it resurfaced on the social media page of her new job leading her to quit Several explained that people in their lives who discovered their videos including former friends and co- workers have attempted to blackmail them in exchange for their silence Casualties spoke of legally changing their names and surgically altering their appearances to avoid recognition A great number of noted they turned to self- medication with drugs and or alcohol and spoke of suicide attempts or suicidal thoughts Prosecutors say Pratt was the mastermind behind the coercive scheme and had a hands-on role in creating the videos including sometimes manning the camera recruiting women who appeared in videos and transporting the women to and from video shoots After casualties were flown out to San Diego where the majority of the website s content was filmed they were presented with contracts that concealed the true purpose of the scheme prosecutors disclosed Rather than stating the videos were for GirlsDoPorn the companies were referred to as Bubblegum Casting BLL Media or other innocuous misleading names The U S Attorney s Office declared certain casualties were narrated they could be sued or their flights home canceled if they didn t complete the videos and that the doors at video shoot locations were often blocked by cameras and recording equipment leaving the casualties feeling powerless and unable to leave Defense attorney Brian White conceded in his sentencing papers that Pratt misled the women about where their videos would end up Mr Pratt now recognizes those misrepresentations were reckless fraudulent and ultimately harmful to a multitude of women White wrote in a sentencing memorandum However he argued that Pratt was not involved with any mistreatment of casualties during the video shoots and stated he took measures to ensure safety during filming The defense filing also alleged that erratic and unpredictable conduct from porn actor Ruben Andre Garcia who was in all the videos involving the casualties in the event was unknown to Pratt such as providing alcohol and marijuana to the women or engaging in extracurricular contact with the models Several casualties pushed back on that claim though One woman declared that during the filming of her video she begged Pratt to halt the video shoot but he refused White also wrote that doorways at the filming locations were not intentionally barricaded but that the rooms were merely cramped and offered little to no room to store the equipment There was no intention to block access to the door it was absolutely a convenient place to store the empty crates and boxes during filming the memorandum states White wrote that Pratt made efforts to protect women s identities from being publicly circulated after a website was launched by another person which exposed multiple of the sufferers names The attorney wrote that Pratt purchased the site with the intention of shutting it down Assistant U S Attorney Alexandra Foster noted that whatever Pratt s intention he continued to recruit women for GirlsDoPorn while knowing their identities weren t being safeguarded and continued to lie to them about the videos going online Along with criminal charges the website s operators were sued by women featured in the videos including several who spoke Monday The civil lawsuit led to a nearly million verdict against GirlsDoPorn in early Pratt left the country after the civil trial got underway After criminal charges were filed Pratt spent more than three years on the lam and was at one time on the FBI s Top Ten Preponderance Desired list He was arrested in Spain in late Pratt is among the last GirlsDoPorn employees to be sentenced in the long-running criminal scenario Sammartino has sentenced several of his co-defendants including Garcia who received a -year sentence Pratt s ex-business partner Matthew Isaac Wolfe who was sentenced to years and camera operator Theodore Gyi who was sentenced to four years in prison Another co-defendant Alexander Brian Foster was sentenced to one year in prison for creating a video meant to harass and publicly identify the women who sued GirlsDoPorn Prosecutors commented the video which was never completed or issued was made at Pratt s direction and that he instructed Foster to include video clips of the women s videotaped depositions from the civil circumstance their Instagram posts and video footage of them leaving the courthouse Later this week GirlsDoPorn bookkeeper Valorie Moser is scheduled to be sentenced Prosecutors say Moser largely performed administrative tasks for the company but was aware of the trafficking scheme and attempted to recruit models for the website Another defendant Douglas Wiederhold also awaits sentencing later this year According to his plea agreement Wiederhold appeared as a male actor in GirlsDoPorn videos and also falsely assured at least two women that their videos wouldn t be posted online after knowing other women s videos had already been uploaded to the internet The website s programs also spurred dual lawsuits from more than women against the parent company for porn-streaming site PornHub for profiting off of GirlsDoPorn s trafficking by hosting its videos The company reached settlements with the women in both lawsuits and also agreed to pay over million to resolve a probe by federal prosecutors who alleged the company knew or should have known it was accepting money that originated from sex- trafficking operations City News Operation