Montreal-based Pornhub owner reaches deal with U.S. prosecutors over ties to alleged sex trafficking
Company will pay fine of over $1.8M, agree to monitoring conditions
The Montreal-based company that owns and operates adult entertainment websites including Pornhub.com has reached a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice Department over its ties to an alleged sex trafficking operation, court records showed.
Aylo Holdings, known as MindGeek until a name change this summer, will pay a fine of $1.84 million US and agree to a series of conditions under the terms of the deal.
Federal prosecutors say Aylo's websites hosted content from pornography websites GirlsDoPorn.com (GDP) and GirlsDoToys.com (GDT), whose creators and operators were charged in California in 2019 with deceiving and coercing young women to appear in sex videos. Several were convicted.
Aylo — whose brands also include YouPorn and Brazzers — knew that its proceeds from those websites stemmed from illegal activity, prosecutors said.
"Aylo deeply regrets that its platforms hosted any content produced by GDP/GDT," the company said in a Nov. 10 statement posted on its website announcing the deferred prosecution agreement, adding that it would make an unspecified amount of "monetary payments" to victims.
Company did not independently verify consent
The company added that GDP gave it purported consent forms signed by women in the videos that it now understands were the result of "fraud and coercion." GDP gave MindGeek information that "purported to establish" the women in the videos had consented to their appearances, but Mindgeek did not independently verify that.
Earlier this year, Ottawa-based private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners purchased Mindgeek.
"It was very troubling for us to learn that a production company was using criminal means to produce content," Solomon Friedman, a partner at Ethical Capital Partners, told Reuters on Thursday.
Under the agreement, the criminal charge against Aylo of engaging in monetary transactions derived from unlawful activity will be dismissed after three years, as long as the company improves its compliance protocols. Aylo will also have an independent compliance monitor for that period.
Hundreds of individuals have been identified as victims of GDP's sex trafficking, prosecutors said.