Porn website owner, once one of FBI’s most wanted fugitives, pleads guilty to sex trafficking

Porn website owner Michael Pratt, the mastermind behind the GirlsDoPorn sex trafficking ring and who was placed on the FBI’s notorious “10 Most Wanted Fugatives” list, pleaded guilty Thursday to multiple counts of sex trafficking.

Pratt, who also co-owned GirlsDoToys, conspired with his co-defendants to use force, fraud and coercion to recruit hundreds of young women, most in their late teens, to appear in GirlsDoPorn videos from 2012 to 2019, federal prosecutors in southern California said. Those videos, which were also posted on other free pornography sites, racked up millions of views and generated millions of dollars in revenue for Pratt.

In court, Pratt admitted that to recruit young girls to appear in the videos, he told prospective models that their sex videos would never be posted online, would never be released in the U.S. and no one who knew the women would find out about them.

As part of the scheme, 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 and his co-conspirators would threaten the women if they attempted to back out of shooting, prosecutors said. Most of the videos were made in hotel rooms or short-term rentals in San Diego, California. 

In October 2019, Pratt was charged in a 19-count indictment with sex trafficking, production of child pornography, sex trafficking a minor and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments in connection with a porn website he co-owned.

Federal prosecutors said Pratt liquidated his assets, fled the U.S. and lived as an international fugitive for more than three years before his arrest in Spain in December 2022.

On Thursday, as part of a plea agreement, Pratt pleaded guilty to conspiracy to sex traffic and sex trafficking. He will be sentenced in September.

His co-conspirator, Matthew Wolfe, who operated the two websites, was sentenced to 14 years in prison in March 2025. Ruben Andre Garcia, the male model who engaged in sex acts on video with the women, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2021. Theodore Gyi, who served as the cameraman for the video shoots, was sentenced to four years in prison in November 2022. Valorie Moser, the office manager, is set to be sentenced in September.