The owner of the website GirlsDoPorn was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison for orchestrating a scheme that deceived and exploited hundreds of women, federal prosecutors said Monday.
Michael Pratt, 42, used force, fraud and coercion to recruit hundreds of women — most in their late teens — to appear in videos on the now-defunct GirlsDoPorn website, which he founded in San Diego and ran for about seven years.
In October 2019, the New Zealand native was charged with sex crimes in the Southern District of California but lived as an international fugitive for more than three years, during which he was named to the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted list.
Pratt was arrested in Spain in December 2022 and extradited to San Diego in March of last year.
Earlier this year, Pratt admitted to owning and operating the website, which featured young adult women appearing in their first pornographic video, and pleaded guilty to multiple sex trafficking counts.
He also admitted to recruiting his co-defendant, Matthew Wolfe, who helped operate GirlsDoPorn and its offshoot, GirlsDoToys. Both sites were run as a single business venture, supported by the same employees working out of a shared San Diego office.
Most of the videos produced by the company were shot at hotels or short-term rental units in San Diego with Pratt, Wolfe or co-defendant Theodore Gyi serving as the cameraman.
The women said they were given alcohol and drugs before signing a contract, which they were not allowed to read, and some also said they were sexually assaulted.
Once the women arrived, Pratt and his co-conspirators falsely assured them the videos would not be posted online and that no one who knew them would find out. If any woman tried to stop filming, Pratt and his co-conspirators threatened to sue them, cancel their flights home or post the videos online.
At Pratt’s sentencing hearing, several victims recounted their ordeals in San Diego hotel rooms where they were exploited, coerced, raped, abused and trapped, prosecutors said.
“The life I was meant to have, died in that hotel room,” one woman told the court.
“I am not your victim. I’m your reckoning,” said another, who was a 21-year-old law student at the time. “I am the girl who took you down.”
Pratt’s co-conspirators have also received lengthy sentences after pleading guilty to their roles in the scheme. Wolfe was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison, while Gyi received a four-year sentence. Ruben Garcia, who worked as a recruiter, producer and actor for both websites, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Valorie Moser, the office manager, is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday.
In 2020, a judge ruled in favor of the 22 women who claimed they were victimized by fraud and breach of contract, awarding a $12.7 million judgment against Pratt, Wolfe and Garcia.
