The parent company of popular pornography website Pornhub has acknowledged it profited from sex trafficking and would be making payments to women whose explicit videos and pictures were posted against their consent on the platform.
Aylo Holdings S.A.R.L — the corporation that owns Pornhub — will also pay $1,844,952.83 to the United States government and be under the three-year monitorship of an independent monitor as part of a deferred prosecution agreement with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, according to a Thursday news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“This deferred prosecution agreement holds the parent company of Pornhub.com accountable for its role in hosting videos and accepting payments from criminal actors who coerced young women into engaging in sexual acts on videos that were posted without their consent,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said, according to the news release.
“It is our hope that this resolution, which includes certain agreed payments to the women whose images were posted on the company’s platforms and an independent monitorship brings some measure of closure to those negatively affected,” Peace continued.
The deferred prosecution agreement was over charges related to Pornhub hosting videos produced by the defunct porn production company GirlsDoPorn.
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GirlsDoPorn’s owners were charged and convicted for a variety of crimes related to sex trafficking in 2019, including allegedly coercing women to perform sexual acts on camera, according to the attorney’s office and the Associated Press.
From as early as 2009, the attorney’s office noted, Aylo featured GirlsDoPorn content on its websites, including Pornhub.
Aylo received money from GirlsDoPorn between 2017 and 2019, even though Aylo “knew or should have known” that the funds it received were from GirlsDoPorn’s sex trafficking work, prosecutors said.
Several women who claimed that they were deceived or coerced into making adult media for GirlsDoPorn also sent content removal requests to Aylo, court documents showed.
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The women specifically noted that the videos were posted on Pornhub against their consent.
“Although Aylo sought and received information from the GDP Operators that purported to establish that the complainants had given consent for their videos to be posted online, Aylo did not independently verify consent and did not remove all the videos that were requested to be taken down,” the attorney’s office said.
Prosecutors further said that in 2019, Aylo knew that a GirlsDoPorn videographer testified in court that he had lied to women that the videos of them performing sex acts would not be published online in an attempt to convince them to appear in the films.
Even though Aylo was aware of the testimony, according to prosecutors, the company continued to host the GirlsDoPorn channel and its sister channel GirlsDoToys on Pornhub, receiving money from the company’s business with GirlsDoPorn’s operators.
“Motivated by profit, Aylo Holdings 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,” FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office James Smith said, according to the news release.
“Make no mistake, any entity that engages in sexual exploitation will be held to account for the mental anguish and terror imposed on victims. I hope today’s proceedings bring a sense of justice to the victims in this case as they move forward in their lives,” Smith added.
Should Aylo violate the deferred prosecution agreement, it will be prosecuted on charges of engaging in an unlawful monetary transaction, the attorney’s office said.
In a statement shared with the Associated Press, Aylo said it “deeply regrets” hosting GirlsDoPorn content.
“Aylo is not pleading guilty to any crime, and the Government has agreed to dismiss its charge against the Company after three years, subject to the Company’s continued compliance with the Deferred Prosecution Agreement,” the company said.
