The parent company of the adult entertainment site Pornhub admitted on Thursday to profiting from videos of sex trafficking victims and agreed to pay more than $1.8 million, according to federal prosecutors.
Aylo Holdings will also make payments to the victims who appeared on its platforms and will be subject to an independent monitor for three years, under a prosecution agreement reached with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
“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,” said James Smith, FBI assistant director in charge of the New York Field Office, in a statement.
“Make no mistake, any entity that engages in sexual exploitation will be held to account for the mental anguish and terror imposed on victims,” Smith added. “I hope today’s proceedings bring a sense of justice to the victims in this case as they move forward in their lives.”
Aylo Holdings was charged with engaging in unlawful monetary transactions involving sex trafficking proceeds for hosting videos and accepting payments from GirlsDoPorn (GDP).
Several operators of the pornography company have since been convicted on sex trafficking charges for deceiving and coercing young women to appear in adult videos that were posted online without their consent.
According to federal prosecutors, Aylo Holdings received money between 2017 and 2019 that it “knew or should have known” came from GDP’s sex trafficking operations.
Several of the women who appeared in GDP’s videos requested that Aylo remove them from its sites between 2016 and 2019, saying they had been tricked into making the videos that were then posted on Pornhub without their permission, federal prosecutors said. Aylo was also made aware that multiple women had filed a civil lawsuit against GDP’s operators in September 2017.
However, federal prosecutors said Aylo did not remove all the videos requested to be taken down and did not remove GDP’s official channel from its platforms until October 2019.
“We were troubled to learn that a production company used criminal means to produce its content and submitted consent documentation that we now know was obtained by fraud and coercion,” Aylo Management said in a statement.
“We must be vigilant to stop those seeking to use our platforms illegally, and to respond to ever changing threats and challenges,” it added.
— Updated at 1:37 p.m.
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