People Behind the Girls Do Porn Website Were Just Charged With Sex Trafficking. But Complaints Were Filed About Them Years Ago.

On Oct. 10, the operators of popular pornography website Girls Do Porn were charged with trafficking and conspiracy in a federal criminal complaint. But The Appeal has learned that three women who say they were victimized by the men behind the site filed police reports as far back as 2015. According to records obtained by The Appeal, it appears that police never followed up. In one case, a complaint by a woman who alleged that she was raped by a man who worked for Girls Do Porn was closed the day it was filed. 

Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California allege that Michael Pratt, Matthew Wolfe, Andre Garcia, and Valorie Moser “used deception and false promises” to lure college-age women to fly to San Diego to film pornographic videos they said would never be posted on the internet. Prosecutors say they used “fake names, fake phone numbers, and fake business names” and an elaborate system of “reference” girls who were paid to lie to the young women that Girls Do Porn attempted to recruit. Prosecutors allege that Pratt and others tricked women into participating in commercial sex acts they never would have agreed to had they been aware of the actual purpose of the videos. 

Wolfe was arrested on Oct. 8; Garcia was arrested on Oct. 9. Moser was also arrested, but it’s not clear when she was taken into custody. Pratt’s whereabouts are unknown and he is considered a fugitive. Prosecutors say that financial records obtained from the company show GirlsDoPorn.com and its sister site, GirlsDoToys.com, generated more than $17 million in revenue. The women who say they were tricked into filming pornography have since been the target of relentless harassment online and in person, dropped out of school, considered suicide, and moved to a different country.

“The common theme among the women is that they each regret their decision to make a pornographic video,” said Aaron Sadock, the defendants’ attorney. “They made that decision freely and without coercion. Each one signed a single page model release that allowed the producer to publish the video on the internet and each model verified her understanding in a videotaped statement she read aloud.  The women made no significant complaints until they became the subject of online discussions on forums that permitted users to disclose the women’s identities, something the producer and other defendants in this case never did.”

In July 2015, Jane Doe 1 responded to a Craigslist ad seeking models in the Las Vegas area. She was told she would be filming pornography and that the video would never be posted online or distributed in the United States. According to a declaration Jane Doe 1 submitted in an ongoing civil lawsuit against Girls Do Porn, Garcia told her the video would go to “one private buyer overseas in Australia—and would only be in DVD format.” They even had her speak with another woman, who reassured her the video would not be available elsewhere. She said that when she met Garcia and Wolfe at a hotel in downtown San Diego, they again reassured her that she would remain anonymous and plied her with alcohol before giving her documents to sign, which they said merely reiterated what they had already told her. 

In October of that year, her video was published on Girls Do Porn and her name, contact information, and social media profiles were spread by “the Defendants, their subscribers, and/or third parties” and shared on the website PornWikiLeaks, which Pratt and others allegedly had administrative control over for a period of time, according to her civil suit. Links to her videos and screenshots from them were even sent to faculty and deans at her law school. She became suicidal, went offline, and filed a report with a local police department after repeatedly receiving threatening phone calls from blocked numbers. Given how little the police report is mentioned in Jane Doe 1’s trial testimony or declarations in the case, it appears the report wasn’t followed up on.

Also in October 2015, Jane Doe 17 said she was tagged in an Instagram post advertising the pornographic video she had filmed after responding to a Craigslist ad, which she thought no one would ever see. The post on the Girls Do Porn account included a photo of her on a hotel bed captioned “Coming soon.” The next day, she filed a report at the San Diego Police Department. She hoped there was a way to prevent the video from being released. She felt as though she hadn’t truly consented to being filmed because she was deceived about where the video would be released. She also said she wasn’t allowed to leave the shoot when she said she was in pain and asked to stop. Six days later, her video was released on the Girls Do Porn website. Viewers shared the link to the video on the Yelp page for her mother’s hair salon, her ex-boyfriend’s fraternity played it during a chapter meeting, and she dropped out of school because she was too scared to go to class. 

But the report didn’t seem to be followed up on. A spokesperson for the San Diego Police Department said the department does have a report in its system involving Girls Do Porn, but the outcome of the report is unclear. 

“In general terms, every sex crimes case we get we do the due diligence every time,” said the spokesperson, Sgt. Matthew Botkin. “If it’s a case we can go forward on, we’re gonna go forward on it. If you’re a victim, we’re gonna advocate for you. But if it’s not there, then we can’t make it appear. The justice thing goes both ways, if you’re wrongly accused, we don’t want to make a case on you.”

In November 2015, an anonymous woman filed a police report in Newport Beach, California, after her video was posted on Girls Do Porn. A copy of the report obtained by The Appeal shows that she told police that she was raped by Garcia after filming her video. She said she had met Garcia that September after responding to a Craigslist ad for a modeling job that linked to a website called Begin Modeling. It wasn’t until she arrived at the shoot that she learned she would be filming porn. 

She told police that after filming concluded on a subsequent photo and video shoot, Garcia pestered her with invasive questions. She said Garcia asked her to be his girlfriend, then eventually became irate and forcibly pushed her down onto a bed and sexually assaulted her. Days later, Garcia showed up at her boyfriend’s house and refused to leave until she threatened to call the police. The woman told her parents and her sister that she had been raped, and her parents encouraged her to tell the police. 

But the report went nowhere. On the same day she met with police and filed the report, the officer wrote: “Based on the lack of identifying information, I was unable to determine the exact location of the crime and I was unable to find a person matching the suspect description in any local police databases.”  Even though the woman provided Garcia’s name, emails from the recruiters, and her phone, which had texts from Garcia, the officer instead focused on details like what the victim was wearing, writing in his report that she “got dressed in a black tank top (no bra), pink thong, jeans, and black boots.”

The officer closed the case without ever contacting Garcia or Girls Do Porn. Heather Rangel, a spokesperson for the Newport Beach Police Department, told The Appeal she was unable to provide further information “due to the type of crime and the incident that occurred.”

The numerous alleged sexual assaults connected to Girls Do Porn appear to be corroborated in the recent federal indictment. According to the indictment, “women reported that Garcia assaulted them before or after filming” and said Garcia and others “pressured them to engage in activities outside the scope of what they had agreed to and that, when they protested, Garcia and others threatened them with economic repercussions.”

One of the three women who was a key part of the federal case—referred to as AF-3 in the indictment—said Garcia sexually assaulted her both during and after filming. At one point, she said wanted to leave but saw that lighting equipment was blocking the exit. When she said she wanted to stop, Garcia and Wolfe made her feel like she was not free to leave. She noticed there was blood on the bed, but “was told it was fine and that she would get used to it,” according to the indictment. 

After the filming, Garcia offered to drive her to her car. But when she accepted the ride, she said Garcia drove past the car and parked in a nearby lot. He locked the doors and tried to kiss her. She said attempted to exit the vehicle, but couldn’t, and Garcia climbed on top of her, physically preventing her from exiting. According to the indictment, Garcia removed the woman’s underwear and sexually assaulted her. After the assault, the woman was too scared and embarrassed to report it. She feared that if she reported it, people would find out about the video she made. 

A motion filed in June in the civil case alleges that Garcia sexually assaulted “Jane Doe Nos. 2, 11, 14, 20, 21, and 22 off camera.” The motion also alleges that Garcia assaulted other women who are not plaintiffs in the case. 

“Garcia has been able to repeatedly sexually assault the victims off camera with impunity because he knows his victims cannot call the police because doing so will raise questions as to why the victim was in San Diego,” Brian Holm, attorney for the plaintiffs, wrote in the motion. “Also, Garcia has no fear of his DNA being found using a rape kit because his DNA is already present by virtue of the video being filmed earlier that day or the day before.”