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SAN DIEGO (CN) — The ringleader behind an illegal sex trafficking ring based in San Diego has been ordered to pay almost $76 million in restitution to more than 100 victims.
Michael Pratt was the leader of the GirlsDoPorn sex trafficking ring that exploited hundreds of young women by luring them to San Diego for modeling jobs, but instead coerced them into doing pornography that was widely shared across the internet — despite promises that it would not be. Pratt, who was the owner of GirlsDoPorn.com, ran the website between 2007 and 2019.
He was sentenced to 27 years in prison last September.
The restitution, ordered by U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino Thursday, requires that Pratt pay $75,568,283.47 to his victims as a result of his conviction for conspiracy to commit sex trafficking.
About $17 million of the restitution will go to victims on a pro rata basis, or with each recipient receiving compensation in proportion to their losses. The remaining $58,645,485.47 will be paid to 106 victims.
“Today’s $76 million restitution order is a powerful acknowledgment of the lifelong harm inflicted on these women,” U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon for the Southern District of California said in a statement to Courthouse News. “While no amount of money would fully remedy what they endured, this order holds Pratt financially accountable for some part of the harm that he caused these victims.”
The average restitution amount to each of the victims listed was $553,000, with the smallest being only $440 and the largest being almost $7 million.
Sammartino, a George W. Bush appointee, also ordered that Pratt no longer had the rights to use the likeness of any of the models who were filmed in Pratt’s GirlsDoPorn or GirlsDoToys, referred to as GDP and GDT.
“All purported model releases and other agreements between GDP and/or GDT and its models purporting to give GDP and/or GDT the right to use, publish, or otherwise exploit its models’ images, likenesses, or videos are void and unenforceable,” she wrote.
The restitution will also include payment from Pratt’s co-conspirators, which include Matthew Wolfe, a videographer, Theodore Gyi, also a videographer, Andre Garcia, an actor, and Valerie Moser, who was a bookkeeper, all of whom have received separate sentences.
Douglas Wiederhold, another actor, was also recently sentenced to prison for his part in the sex trafficking ring, though his case was separate.
Pratt and his co-conspirators used the internet to advertise a modeling gig in San Diego to hundreds of young, college-aged women. They used the ads to coerce the women into shooting pornography.
Pratt and his employees would tell the women that the videos would not be made public, and that they would only be used for a private collector in Australia. However, the videos were widely spread across well-known pornography websites around the world.
Some of the victims who have made victim impact statements at recent sentencing hearings have said that they have been continuously harassed and doxxed since the videos — some of which are still available — were published.
Pratt, who is from New Zealand, was initially charged in 2019 with sex trafficking crimes and fled from the United States. He was eventually arrested in Spain in 2022 and extradited back to the U.S. in 2024.
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