Michael Pratt, the mastermind of the sprawling GirlsDoPorn sex trafficking empire, was sentenced in federal court Monday to 27 years in prison for orchestrating a scheme that deceived and exploited hundreds of women and left a trail of broken lives.
Pratt, the owner and operator of GirlsDoPorn.com and GirlsDoToys.com, built a multimillion-dollar criminal empire by luring young women into pornography through lies, coercion, and manipulation, and then broadcasting their abuse to millions online.
At Monday’s hearing, 40 women urged the court to hand down the maximum sentence, some tearfully describing their ordeals in San Diego hotel rooms where they were exploited, coerced, raped, abused and trapped.
Some talked about the aftermath of trauma that included many years of suicide attempts; diagnoses of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder; lost jobs and relationships; stalkers and threats and harassment; and the heavy burden of shame and fear they still carry.
Some told of having cosmetic surgery to alter their appearance; several testified that they changed their names; others spoke of substance abuse and alcoholism; one said she had a glass of wine for breakfast just to make it to court today. Most of the victims were 18-21 years old when they were exploited.
Pratt and his co-conspirators posted misleading modelling ads, preyed on vulnerable women, and promised their sex videos would never be seen online. In reality, Pratt’s employees posted the videos onto his websites, which featured young women appearing in their first pornographic videos.
They even promoted them on free pornography platforms like PornHub to drive traffic. Victims were coerced into finishing shoots under threats of lawsuits, cancelled flights, and exposure. Some were effectively trapped in hotel rooms by camera equipment blocking the exits.
“Pratt has caused me to fear my own name,” one woman said.
“The life I was meant to have, died in that hotel room,” another told the court.
“Profit over people. Cruelty over humanity,” another said.
Many spoke directly to Pratt:
“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. “Look around! We are an army of survivors sharing our truth and we have won.”
Another woman, who was a 19-year-old dance teacher to children but was fired, told Pratt: “You are evil. You are a predator. You are a rapist. This is who you are. Your ego was too big to believe you’d ever get caught but karma comes around. It is your turn now to suffer.”
A woman who was a 21-year-old college student studying to become a teacher said: “This crime dismantled my identity. I lost my voice and sense of safety…The shame and despair were unbearable.”
Another woman who was a college-bound high school senior but dropped out because of her ordeal said: “This was a theft of my identity, my safety, my dreams and my peace.”
After hearing about five hours of testimony from the women, U.S. District Judge Janis L. Sammartino told the defendant that his position as the leader, organiser and mastermind of the massive trafficking organisation compelled her to add time to the sentence.
“I’ve been doing this a very long time and I’ve never had a case like this before, of this magnitude…The sheer scope and magnitude of this offence causes this court to vary upward,” said the judge.
Throughout the conspiracy, GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys received millions of views. To promote the websites, video content from both sites was posted on free porn sites such as Pornhub.com, one of the world’s most visited websites.
The videos from GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys posted on PornHub were often viewed millions of times, according to PornHub’s own view counters. The websites charged visitors a subscription fee to access content and generated millions of dollars in revenue for Pratt.
To recruit young women to appear in videos for the websites, Pratt and some of his employees (at Pratt’s direction) often told the prospective models that their sex videos would never be posted on-line, that the videos would never be released in the United States, and that no one who knew the women would ever find out about their video, representations that Pratt and other members of the conspiracy knew were false. Women from various places throughout the United States and Canada were recruited to appear in videos based on these material misrepresentations.
Even after Pratt learned that victims’ names and personal details were being doxxed on pornwikileaks.com, he pressed forward with his scheme, reaping millions in profit while ignoring desperate pleas from women begging him to take their videos down.
The GirlsDoPorn investigation and prosecution spanned years, involving FBI agents, FBI analysts, the U.S. Marshal Service, victim advocates, and prosecutors who worked tirelessly to secure justice for the victims. Multiple co-conspirators have been convicted in connection with the scheme, but Pratt’s sentencing marks the most significant step in dismantling the criminal network he created.
Pratt was charged in October 2019 in the Southern District of California with sex trafficking crimes in connection with the scheme to deceive and coerce young women to appear in pornographic videos. Pratt liquidated his assets and fled the United States in mid-2019. He was named to the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted list and lived as an international fugitive for more than three years until his arrest in Spain in December 2022 and extradition to San Diego in March 2024.
Pratt pleaded guilty on June 5, 2025, to Conspiracy to Commit Sex Trafficking by Force, Fraud and Coercion; and Committing Sex Trafficking by Force, Fraud and Coercion. Prosecutors argued for the longest sentence given the serious nature of the offences, Pratt’s leadership role, and the length of the conspiracy.
Pratt has received the longest sentence so far of all the conspirators. Ruben Andre Garcia was sentenced to 20 years in prison on June 14, 2021. Theodore Gyi was sentenced to four years in prison on November 9, 2022. Matthew Wolfe was sentenced to 14 years in prison on March 20, 2024. Valorie Moser, the office manager, is set for sentencing on September 12, 2025.
One of the women said, “Today is the day we all get to reclaim our lives. As I stand here, I feel something I haven’t felt in years: Empowerment. After today, I choose healing. I choose to reclaim the dreams I once had.”
Another testified: “For years I carried shame that never belonged to me…Today, I will walk out of this courtroom an empowered woman. You will walk out in shackles.”
