Pornhub parent company admits to profiting from sex trafficking, agrees to 3-year monitor
Pornhub's parent company has admitted in federal court to profiting from sex trafficking and agreed to be monitored for three years as part of a deferred prosecution agreement, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in a press release last week.
Aylo Holdings S.A.R.L., which owns Pornhub and other adult websites, will also pay the U.S. government $1.8 million and compensate victims after being arraigned in Brooklyn on a charge of engaging in unlawful monetary transactions involving sex trafficking proceeds, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
Aylo, formerly known as MindGeek, had been accused of knowingly hosting videos that depict sexual abuse and of engaging in an unlawful monetary transaction with the websites GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys, which were shut down following a DOJ investigation charging the adult website executives with sex trafficking crimes.
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Prosecutors claimed that multiple women contacted Aylo between 2016 and 2017 to report that they had been lied to and defrauded into filming content for GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys, and that the videos were posted to Pornhub without their consent. They also said Aylo "should have known" after women who appeared in the videos filed a civil lawsuit in 2017, claiming they were tricked into making the videos.
Aylo only ended its partnership with GirlsDoPorn in 2019, prosecutors said, and did not remove all the content in question until December 2020. Pornhub removed millions of videos and confessed that at least 118 of them contained confirmed instances of child sex abuse material following a New York Times article that month accusing Pornhub of hosting child sex abuse content.
The company has claimed that the investigation found Aylo and its affiliates had not violated any federal laws related to sex trafficking or the sexual exploitation of minors, but said in a statement in November that it "deeply regrets that its platforms hosted any content produced by GDP/GDT [Girls Do Porn and Girls Do Toys]."
"While the production company provided the platforms with written documentation that purported to be consent forms signed by women who were featured in the GDP/GDT productions, and Aylo was unaware of GDP/GDT's criminal conduct, Aylo now understands that those forms were obtained by GDP/GDT through fraud and coercion," the company added.
As part of the agreement, an independent monitor will ensure that Aylo adheres to the deferred prosecution agreement, and "will also evaluate the strength and thoroughness of Aylo’s due diligence protocols" regarding its content partners, its screening processes, its handling of takedown requests, and its disclosure to law enforcement regarding illegal content.
Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement that the agreement "will not only provide oversight over one of the largest online content distributors in the world and ensure the company’s lawful behavior, but it will also develop industrywide standards for safety and compliance."
FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge James Smith said in a statement that Aylo was "motivated by profit" and "knowingly enriched itself by turning a blind eye to the concerns of victims who communicated to the company that they were deceived and coerced into participating in illicit sexual activity."
Haley McNamara, who serves as vice president of strategy and communications at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCSE), praised the agreement in a statement and called for continued accountability.
“This announcement is a huge victory for survivors who have been bravely coming forward for years with their testimonies of exploitation and abuse on Pornhub while Pornhub’s parent company refused to take responsibility," said McNamara, whose nonprofit filed a lawsuit in July 2021 on behalf of multiple defendants who allegedly had their images or video uploaded to Pornhub without their consent.
"Finally, Pornhub’s parent company has admitted to profiting from sex trafficking concerning one sex trafficking operation which alone victimized hundreds of women. Now the company must be held accountable to the highest degree of the law civilly and criminally, not only in this case, but in many others."
Noting that there are now two class-action lawsuits and other civil lawsuits against Pornhub, McNamara said the victims "deserve justice."
"By admitting to profiting from sex trafficking, Pornhub disqualifies itself from speaking on issues like pornography performer welfare, age verification, online privacy, and child safety," she added. "Pornhub has demonstrated that it does not care about those who have been exploited on its platform and therefore cannot be trusted."
Aylo did not immediately respond to The Christian Post's request for comment, but Solomon Friedman, whose private equity firm acquired Aylo this year, told The New York Times that Aylo has not acknowledged engaging in illegal activity.
“While we did not know that our partner at the time, GirlsDoPorn, was involved in unlawful activity, we later learned that they were and we regret that deeply,” he said.
Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to [email protected]
