The owner of Pornhub has admitted making more than $864,000 (£679,000) from sex trafficking by posting videos of women on his site without their consent, US prosecutors have said.
Aylo Holdings “deliberately enriched itself by turning a blind eye” to victims who told the company they had been lied to and coerced into the videos, said James Smith, head of the FBI’s New York office.
The Montreal-based company, formerly known as MindGeek, has agreed to pay more than $1.8m (£1.4m) to the US government and individual damages to victims.
Under an agreement between Aylo and prosecutors, the company has agreed to pay restitution to victims, but it is not known who is eligible and how they can apply.
Aylo was found to have hosted videos and accepted payments from GirlsDoPorn, a now-defunct adult film production company whose operators were convicted of a number of sex-trafficking crimes.
Breon Peace, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in the statement: “It is our hope that this decision, which includes certain agreed payments to the women whose images were posted on the company’s platforms and an independent monitoring cabinet, brings a certain scale. of closure for those adversely affected.”
Pornhub is one of the world’s largest adult content websites and is often referred to as the “YouTube of porn”.
From 2017 to 2020, Aylo received $864,000 (£679,000) that insiders knew or should have known came from GirlsDoPorn’s sex-trafficking operations, prosecutors said.
The company was too slow and not thorough enough to remove all videos without consent, even after some of the women appealed directly to the company.
According to prosecutors, the company received more than $100,000 (£79,000) from GirlsDoPorn, as well as around $764,000 (£600,000) in payments from advertisers attributable to the production company.
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Aylo Holdings said in a statement that it “deeply regrets” hosting content from GirlsDoPorn.
GirlsDoPorn, it said, gave them written consent forms purportedly signed by the women, so it did not know the forms were obtained through fraud and coercion.
“Aylo pleads not guilty to any crime, and the government has agreed to dismiss its charges against the company after three years, subject to the company’s continued compliance with the deferred prosecution agreement,” the company said.
On Wednesday, the European Union said Pornhub and two other major porn sites would have to prove the age of their users to keep people safe on the internet.
