A group of women who were victims of the "Girls Do Porn" scam have filed a lawsuit potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars against Aylo, which operates Pornhub and a large collection of other pornography sites, asking a court to order the company to pay for distributing illegal porn videos in which they were featured against their will.
"Girls Do Porn" was a sex trafficking venture launched in San Diego in 2007 by Michael Pratt and Matthew Wolfe, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.
" For over a decade, GirlsDoPorn used force, fraud, and coercion to get hundreds of high school and college-aged women to film pornographic videos that GirlsDoPorn sold on the Internet," the suit says. "The videos went viral amongst every person in the victims’ network, causing them to become pariahs in their own communities. Victims were ridiculed and ostracized by friends, classmates, teachers, professors, principals, clergy members, and family."
The videos eventually led to a federal investigation and criminal charges, according to the lawsuit which lists 121 "Jane Doe" plaintiffs.
"Aylo finally removed Girls Do Porn’s videos from its websites," the suit states. "But this was too little too late. Aylo had already spent a decade spreading the videos to every corner of the globe where they could be downloaded for free with the click of a button."
The suit seeks at least $10 million in damages for each plaintiff plus "restitution for all monies Aylo earned marketing, selling and exploiting Plaintiffs’ videos in an amount that exceeds $100,000 for each plaintiff."
The plaintiffs are represented by Brian M. Holm, Joseph S. Green, Nathan G. Batterman of Holm Law Group, P.C.
Jane Does 60-121 v. Aylo Media S.A.R.L., U.S. District Court, Southern District of California, 3:23-cv-01821