The parent company of the pornographic site Pornhub, Aylo Holdings, will pay $1.8 million to the American courts and will have to compensate victims in order to escape prosecution for sex trafficking.
The owner of Pornhub, one of the world’s largest adult websites, admitted to profiting from sex trafficking and agreed to make payments to women whose videos were posted without their consent, federal prosecutors said Thursday from New York.
The agreement calls for the Montreal company to pay more than $1.8 million to the American government and to make individual payments to women victims of trafficking. It also provides for the appointment of an independent monitor for three years, after which the charges will be dropped. Prosecutors said details of who is eligible and how to apply for compensation would not be released.
“This deferred prosecution agreement keeps the parent company pornhub.com responsible for hosting videos and accepting remuneration from criminals who forced young women to perform sexual acts that were filmed and then broadcast without their consent,” Brooklyn federal prosecutor Breon Peace said in the statement.
The magistrate said “hope that this (transactional) settlement, accompanied by financial compensation for women whose image was published on the company’s platforms, (them) will allow them to turn the page”.
“Aylo does not plead guilty to any crime”
On its website, Aylo, founded in Montreal in 2004, claims to offer “world-class adult entertainment on some of the safest online platforms.”
According to federal court filings, Aylo began hosting pornographic videos created by GirlsDoPorn in 2009 and accepting payments from the company, which is owned by Michael Pratt and associates. These individuals were indicted in 2019 in California for a series of sex trafficking crimes, including coercing young women to engage in filmed sex acts that were then posted on Pornhub and other adult sites without their consent.
Prosecutors say that between 2017 and 2020, Aylo received sex trafficking money from GirlsDoPorn, and that company officials knew or should have known where it came from. They also claim the company failed to quickly or entirely remove nonconsensual videos, even after several women appealed directly to the company.
According to prosecutors, the company received more than $100,000 from GirlsDoPorn as well as approximately $764,000 in payments from advertisers linked to the production company.
Aylo Holdings, formerly MindGeek, said in a statement that it “deeply regrets” hosting content from GirlsDoPorn on its platforms. She claims she was provided with consent forms purportedly signed by the women, but was unaware they were obtained through fraud and coercion.
“Aylo does not plead guilty to any crime, and the government has agreed to drop charges against the company after three years, provided the company continues to comply with the deferred prosecution agreement,” the company said.
This legal agreement in the United States comes the day after an announcement by the European Commission, which added the pornographic sites Pornhub, Stripchat and XVideos to the list of very large online platforms subject to reinforced controls under the new Brussels legislation on digital services, particularly for the protection of minors.
