A former employee of the non-defunct GirlsDoPorn.com – who appeared in dozens of the website’s videos – pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal conspiracy charge.
Douglas Wiederhold is the latest defendant to enter a guilty plea in the criminal cases against the owners and operators of the San Diego-based website. He was indicted last year.
Prosecutors say they engaged in a years-long sex trafficking conspiracy in which women were coerced and tricked into appearing in pornographic videos under false pretenses.
Prosecutors say the operators, despite always intending to post the videos on the internet, led women to believe the videos they appeared in would be distributed only to private customers living outside of the country.
According to his plea agreement, Wiederhold appeared as the male actor in 71 GirlsDoPorn videos. He also falsely assured at least two women that their videos wouldn’t go online after knowing other women’s videos already had been posted, the plea agreement states.
Court documents indicate Wiederhold’s involvement with GirlsDoPorn occurred between 2011 and 2012, a considerably shorter period than many of the other defendants.
Wiederhold is scheduled to appear for sentencing in July before U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino, who has sentenced all the other defendants in the GirlsDoPorn case other than website owner Michael James Pratt. That case remains ongoing.
Pratt spent more than three years on the lam before being arrested in Spain in late 2022. He was extradited to San Diego last month and remains in custody. He faces 19 felony counts.
Others prosecuted include porn actor Ruben Andre Garcia, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and Pratt’s business partner Matthew Isaac Wolfe, who received a 14-year sentence earlier this year.
Videographer Theodore Gyi was sentenced to four years in prison, while administrative assistant Valorie Moser awaits sentencing later this year.
Another defendant, Alexander Brian Foster, pleaded guilty to creating a video meant to harass several women who sued GirlsDoPorn. He was sentenced to just over one year in prison.
Prior to the criminal prosecution, the website and its operators were sued by 22 women featured in videos. A San Diego judge awarded the women nearly $13 million at the end of a civil trial.
The website’s activities also spurred dual lawsuits from more than 100 women against the parent company of porn-streaming site PornHub for allegedly profiting off of GirlsDoPorn’s trafficking by hosting its videos.
The company reached settlements with the women in both lawsuits and also agreed to pay over $1.8 million to resolve a probe by federal prosecutors who alleged the company knew or should have known it was accepting money that originated from sex-trafficking operations.
– City News Service
