A New Zealand man who founded a California-based porn empire that recruited women with false modelling offers pleaded guilty to sex trafficking charges in a federal court, authorities said.
Michael James Pratt pleaded guilty Thursday (local time) in federal court in San Diego, according to the US Department of Justice. He faces a possible life sentence when he is sentenced September 25.
Pratt, 42, was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list when he was arrested in Madrid in 2022, three years after he fled while facing sex trafficking charges.
Federal prosecutors said Pratt and his co-defendants used force, fraud and coercion to recruit hundreds of women, many of whom were in their late teens, for their adult videos.
A New Zealand native, he founded the now-defunct GirlsDoPorn website in San Diego. In 2019, he and others were charged in San Diego with sex crimes after being targeted in a civil lawsuit by 22 women who claimed they were victimised by fraud and breach of contract.
The women said they were plied with alcohol and marijuana before being rushed through signing a contract, which they were not allowed to read. Some said they were sexually assaulted and held in hotel rooms unwillingly until adult filming had ended.
A judge in 2020 found in favour of the women and handed down a US$12.7 million (NZ$21 million) judgment against Pratt, Matthew Isaac Wolfe and adult producer and performer Ruben Andre Garcia.
Wolfe, who handled day-to-day operations, finances, marketing and filming for the website, pleaded guilty in 2022 to a single federal count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. He was sentenced last year to 14 years in federal prison.
The other co-defendants also pleaded guilty. Garcia was sentenced to 20 years in prison and cameraman Theodore Gyi received a four-year sentence.
Valorie Moser, a former bookkeeper for the website, also pleaded guilty last year. She’s scheduled to be sentenced September 12.
