Founder of California-based porn empire sentenced to 27 years in federal prison

SAN DIEGO  — The founder of a California-based porn empire that recruited women with false modeling offers was sentenced Monday to 27 years in federal prison.

Michael James Pratt pleaded guilty in June in federal court in San Diego. 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.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino sentenced Pratt on one charge of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion and one count of conspiracy to commit the same crime.

Pratt 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.

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 victimized 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 filming had ended.

The women were told the videos would go to private DVD collections overseas, but instead they were widely disseminated on the GirlsDoPorn network of sites and free pornography sites. Many asked that the videos be taken down from the Internet, but their requests were ignored.

A judge in 2020 found in favor of the women and handed down a $12.7 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 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.