The Alex from GirlsDoPorn Controversy: Exploitation and Legal Repercussions
The "Alex from GirlsDoPorn" controversy encompasses a series of events surrounding the pornography production company GirlsDoPorn (GDP), based in San Diego, California. The company produced pornography in the style of a 'casting couch', featuring women who were not professional pornographic actors. The company's practices, detailed in lawsuits, mainstream media reports, and court testimonies, have brought to light accusations of deception, coercion, and exploitation.
GirlsDoPorn's Modus Operandi
GirlsDoPorn attracted women by posting fake modeling advertisements on Craigslist, and women who responded to fake modeling advertisements on Craigslist were put into contact with 'reference girls' who pretended to have had positive experiences with the company. Participants could be promised between $2,000 and $6,000 for 30 minutes of sex on camera. Michael Pratt, Matthew Wolfe, and Andre Garcia often used aliases when dealing with the girls they recruited and never revealed their real names. Pratt would use names such as "Mike" and "Mark". Garcia mostly went by "Jonathan", and Wolfe used "Ben", "Joshua" and "Isaac" when doing the recruiting and subsequent filming.
Once in San Diego, women were met by employees who had signed non-disclosure agreements forbidding them from mentioning the name GirlsDoPorn. The contracts involving the 22 plaintiffs also did not mention "GirlsDoPorn" anywhere in the entire document, as per court records. There were reports that company employees drank, smoked cannabis with them, or offered them cocaine. The civil case judgement also observed that the main male talent Garcia would offer the models drugs and/or alcohol before the shoot in order to calm their nerves and loosen up.
Deceptive Recruitment and Coercive Tactics
Lawsuits and other testimony describe practices by GirlsDoPorn in detail. One attorney pursuing legal actions reported that he and his co-counsel communicated with 150 women who said that they were misled during their experience filming videos for GirlsDoPorn. According to one such person, reference girls were hired to lie to the women and conceal information in order to convince them to agree to the job.
Former employee Val Moser testified that only 50% of women received the amount of money they were promised. The court case found that women were frequently told that their pay would be reduced immediately after stripping naked, despite never being told that their pay was contingent. Another frequently used tactic was to cut pay after the scene was shot by citing body flaws even though the models had sent nude photos clearly showing whatever blemishes and tattoos they had. One woman was paid $400 after having been promised $2,000, and also locked out of the hotel room where she was expecting to stay. After the shoot she left the room because she was feeling upset and when she came back most of the money they had given her was gone. The envelope of money contained only a few $20s and a stack of $1s, totaling $400. Some women filmed on multiple occasions, with threats of their first video's release used to coerce them to make further videos. One woman reported that naked photos she had sent in communication over the Craigslist advert were also published. Some women reported experiencing sexually transmitted infections from sexual contact with Garcia.
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Videos were published online around a month after recording.
Online Harassment and Personal Information Disclosure
Personal information of the women was posted online, including contact details, former high schools and places of employment, and both their and their families' full names, social media profiles and home addresses. Many women contacted GirlsDoPorn employees to complain. According to court documents, the company's response varied. In some cases they claimed that they would attempt to remove the video; in others, they referred to Panakos Law, which would send cease-and-desist requests to the complainant. Women involved in filming reported that their family, friends, and colleagues were sent text messages with links to videos or GIFs of them having sex when the videos they made were published online.
Legal Actions and Key Individuals
In June 2016, lawyer Carrie Goldberg contracted the cybersecurity and cyber intelligence firm Fortalice, LLC to investigate the identities of the owners of GirlsDoPorn. Intelligence professional Charles DeBarber identified Wolfe and Pratt as the owners of GirlsDoPorn, not an offshore entity linked to the Panama Papers in Vanuatu, and their main recruiter/male performer as Ruben Andre Garcia. In June 2016, four women filed a lawsuit in the San Diego Superior Court against Wolfe, Pratt, Garcia, and GirlsDoPorn. Six months later, the lawsuit had 14 plaintiffs; within a year, the number was 22. Plaintiffs were aged between 17 and 22 during recruiting of their videos for GirlsDoPorn and most of them were college students at the time of filming the video. 10 of the 22 plaintiffs reported that they wanted to leave at some point before or during the shoot but were forced to complete it.
Several individuals played key roles in GirlsDoPorn:
- Michael Pratt: Pratt began planning and shooting for GirlsDoPorn in 2007. Pratt began working in the pornographic industry around the year 2000, after graduating from high school. In 2007, Pratt moved to the United States to film pornography.
- Matthew Wolfe: Matthew Wolfe (born 1982 or 1983, New Zealand) was co-owner and cameraman. In 2011, Wolfe moved from New Zealand to the United States. He is also a childhood friend of Pratt's.
- Doug Wiederhold: Between 2007 and 2012, Wiederhold worked with Pratt, the two filming videos of Wiederhold having sex in hotel rooms with women who were not in the porn industry. These videos formed the basis of the videos first released by GirlsDoPorn.
- Ruben Andre Garcia: Doug Wiederhold and Ruben Andre Garcia (born 1986 or 1987) were the main male pornographic actors for the company.
- Aaron Sadock: Lawyer Aaron Sadock began working for the company in 2012.
- Theodore "Teddy" Gyi: Cameraman Theodore "Teddy" Gyi filmed around 120 videos between 2015 and 2017.
- Valorie Moser: In November 2019, a federal indictment was unsealed naming three more individuals-Theodore Gyi, Valorie Moser, and Amberlyn Dee Nored-as defendants. Moser was the administrative assistant who had worked for Pratt for almost three years. She had also testified on the plaintiffs' behalf in the trial.
- Amberlyn Dee Nored: Nored had acted as a fake reference girl on Pratt's behalf.
- Alexander Brian Foster: On January 24, 2023, cameraman Alexander Brian Foster was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit stalking and he pleaded guilty the same day. He admitted to filming around 100 videos for GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys and creating the video "22 Whores + 5 Shady Lawyers VS GirlsDoPorn".
Court Proceedings and Outcomes
An initial trial date was set for March 8, 2018, but the trial was set back by several different delays. In January 2019, the judge set a tentative ruling that Wolfe, Pratt, and Garcia had engaged in "malice, fraud or oppression". The same day, Pratt filed for bankruptcy, and the case was put on hold. The bankruptcy judge deemed that Pratt had acted in bad faith, so the case resumed in early 2019. After further delay, trial began on August 20, 2019, lasting until November 2019. In September 2019, attorneys were told that Pratt had left the country. The following month, Garcia and Wolfe were arrested on charges of sex trafficking after a search warrant was executed by the FBI. Wolfe was denied bail in October 2019, and again in May 2020.
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In December 2020, Garcia pled guilty to federal charges of sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion. On June 14, 2021, Garcia was sentenced to 20 years in custody, more than the prosecutors' suggested 12.5 years and the 7 years sought by his defense team. He will also be on supervised release for 10 years following the end of his custodial term.
In January 2021, Gyi pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion; he lied to performers that their videos would not be posted on the Internet. He was sentenced to four years in prison on November 9, 2022. Six of his victims gave their impact statements during his sentencing hearing. In March 2023, Gyi was ordered to pay over $100,000 as restitution to two of his victims.
On July 26, 2022, Wolfe plead guilty to the count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison on March 19, 2024.
In April 2021, Moser pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion.
On June 21, 2023, Doug Wiederhold was indicted on the charges of conspiracy to sex trafficking and sex trafficking of five GirlsDoPorn models. The sealed indictment was then made public on September 14, 2023. He appeared in a San Diego Federal Court that day.
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Michael Pratt's Flight and Apprehension
In September 2020, Pratt was added to the FBI's wanted fugitives list. He was listed in the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives in September 2022, with an offer of $100,000 for information that lead to his arrest. He replaced fugitive Jason Derek Brown, who was removed from the list for no longer meeting the list criteria. On December 21, 2022, Pratt was arrested in a hotel in Madrid, Spain by the Spanish National Police pursuant to an Interpol Red Notice.
Obstruction and Harassment
There are multiple reported cases of attempted disruption or obstruction during trials. Attorney Holm was harassed throughout the legal process, with fake gay porn images of him spread, and one woman testifying that she was paid to make repeated harassing phone calls to him by a GirlsDoPorn employee. He reported that harassing posts on social media and pornography blogs were made about himself, his wife and young daughter, and that a private investigator was hired to follow him. In a separate case, brothers Fredrick Jimenez and Efrain Jimenez were charged in December 2019 for obstruction of sex trafficking enforcement. The complaint states that they tried to remove and destroy evidence related to the federal sex trafficking in October 2019.
MindGeek's Involvement and Lawsuits
Lawsuits filed against Pornhub's parent company, Aylo (then MindGeek) focus on its partnership with GirlsDoPorn and alleged hosting of such videos from 2011 to December 2020 despite repeated requests for removal by subjects. The lawsuit claims that MindGeek knew about the company's sex trafficking as early as 2009 and definitely by fall 2016, but continued to partner with GirlsDoPorn until the company became defunct. MindGeek featured GirlsDoPorn as a Content Partner and a member of the Viewshare Program. The lawsuit also alleges that MindGeek failed to remove GirlsDoPorn videos despite requests for removal by victims, as recently as December 2020. The plaintiffs sought $80 million in damages. On September 8, 2023, a woman who filmed multiple videos for GirlsDoPorn filed a federal civil case against Aylo and its owners Ethical Capital Partners. The lawsuit claims that GirlsDoPorn was sustained by Aylo's use of its content and aggressive marketing strategies, from which Aylo financially profited.
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