Porn empire owner, once on FBI's most wanted list, gets 27 years in prison CBSNewsSeptember 10, 2025 at 4:44 AM 0 The founder of a Californiabased porn empire that recruited women with false modeling offers was sentenced Monday to 27 years in federal prison.
- - Porn empire owner, once on FBI's most wanted list, gets 27 years in prison
CBSNewsSeptember 10, 2025 at 4:44 AM
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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, who was once placed on the FBI's notorious "10 Most Wanted Fugitives" list, 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.
At the sentencing hearing, 40 women urged the court to hand down the maximum sentence, with "some tearfully describing their ordeals in San Diego hotel rooms where they were exploited, coerced, raped, abused and trapped," the Justice Department said in a news release.
"The life I was meant to have, died in that hotel room," one woman told the court.
Many victims spoke directly to Pratt, prosecutors said.
"I am not your victim. I'm your reckoning…I am the girl who took you down," said a victim who was a 21-year-old law student at the time. "We are an army of survivors sharing our truth and we have won."
One woman who was a college student studying to become a teacher when she was victimized also addressed Pratt, prosecutors said. "This crime dismantled my identity. I lost my voice and sense of safety…The shame and despair were unbearable," she said.
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 was arrested in Madrid in 2022, three years after he fled while facing sex trafficking charges.
Michael James Pratt, who was on the FBI's most wanted fugitives list, was caught in Spain. / Credit: FBI
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.
Pratt and other co-conspirators took steps to ensure that the victims did not find out they owned and operated the two pornography websites by intentionally omitting any reference to them in documents and statements, prosecutors said. The business was instead often identified by names, such as "Begin Modeling," "Bubblegum Casting," or "BLL Media."
"Pratt was a calculating and cruel predator," U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said in a statement. "He lured young victims, caused others to abuse them on video, and then taunted them for years as they sought to reclaim their names."
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.
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