The founding father of a California-based porn empire that coerced younger ladies into filming grownup movies has been arrested in Spain, three years after he fled whereas dealing with federal sex-trafficking prices, the FBI stated.
Michael James Pratt was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wished listing. Spanish Nationwide Police arrested him Wednesday in Madrid, the FBI’s San Diego area workplace stated in an announcement Thursday.
Pratt, a New Zealand native, will probably be held in Spain pending extradition to San Diego to face prices of intercourse trafficking and intercourse trafficking of a minor, manufacturing of kid pornography and cash laundering conspiracy.
Pratt, 40, based the now-defunct GirlsDoPorn web site in San Diego. In 2019, he and others had been charged in San Diego with intercourse crimes after being focused in a civil lawsuit by 22 ladies who claimed they had been victimized by fraud and breach of contract.
The ladies stated they had been plied with alcohol and marijuana earlier than being rushed via signing a contract, which they weren’t allowed to learn. Some stated they had been sexually assaulted and held in lodge rooms unwillingly till grownup filming had ended.
A choose present in favor of the ladies and handed down a $12.7-million judgment in opposition to Pratt, Matthew Isaac Wolfe and grownup producer and performer Ruben Andre Garcia.
Wolfe, who dealt with day-to-day operations, funds, advertising and marketing and filming for the web site, pleaded responsible this yr to a federal rely of conspiracy to commit intercourse trafficking. He awaits sentencing.
The opposite co-defendants additionally pleaded responsible. Garcia was sentenced to twenty years in jail, and cameraman Theodore Gyi acquired a four-year sentence.
Valorie Moser, a former bookkeeper for GirlsDoPorn, pleaded responsible final yr.
