GirlsDoPorn Owner Michael Pratt Pleads Guilty to Sex Trafficking in San Diego
On June 5, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego, San Diego County, California, Michael Pratt, the owner of the pornography website GirlsDoPorn, pleaded guilty in federal court to sex trafficking counts, admitting that he deceived and coerced hundreds of young women into appearing in pornographic videos. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of California announced the plea the same day.
Pratt, 42, was charged in October 2019 in the Southern District of California with sex trafficking crimes. He liquidated his assets and fled the United States in mid-2019, was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, and lived as an international fugitive for more than three years until his arrest in Spain in December 2022 and his extradition to San Diego in March 2024.
In his plea agreement, Pratt pleaded guilty to Count One of the superseding indictment, conspiracy to commit sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion from 2012 to 2019, and Count Two, sex trafficking of Victim 1 in May 2012. The counts rest on Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1594 and 1591; the second carries a mandatory minimum of 15 years, and both carry a maximum of life in prison.
Prosecutors said Pratt and his co-defendants recruited women with false promises that the videos would never be posted online, would never be released in the United States, and that no one who knew the women would ever find out. Contracts and statements hid the websites behind names such as Begin Modeling, Bubblegum Casting and BLL Media, and the women were not given copies of the contracts they signed. Most videos were shot at hotels and short-term rental units in the San Diego area, and women who asked to stop were threatened with lawsuits, cancelled flights home and having the videos posted online. The videos were viewed millions of times on sites such as Pornhub and generated millions of dollars in subscription revenue.
Count Two concerned an 18-year-old victim whom Pratt recruited in May 2012 through a modeling advertisement, falsely assuring her the video would only be seen by private clients in Australia and would not be posted on the internet, and using another young woman to reassure her. After she flew to San Diego for the shoot, her video was posted on GirlsDoPorn about nine months later; when she begged Pratt to take it down, he did not reply and did not remove it.
Co-defendants had already been sentenced: Ruben Andre Garcia received 20 years in June 2021, Theodore Gyi received four years on November 9, 2022, and Matthew Wolfe received 14 years on March 20, 2024; office manager Valorie Moser was set for sentencing on September 12, 2025. The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Pratt's sentencing was scheduled for September 8, 2025, at 9 a.m. before U.S. District Judge Janis L. Sammartino.
(Source: U.S. Department of Justice)
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于加州圣迭戈县圣迭戈市的 James M. Carter and Judith N. Keep 美国法院大楼，加州南区联邦法院所在地。Another Believer 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: The James M. Carter and Judith N. Keep United States Courthouse in San Diego, San Diego County, California, home of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. Photo by Another Believer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
