The final defendant in the long-running prosecution involving GirlsDoPorn.com was sentenced Friday in San Diego federal court.
Douglas Wiederhold, 42, who appeared as a male actor in 71 of the website’s pornographic videos, pleaded guilty in 2024 to a federal conspiracy charge for his involvement with the now-defunct site. He was sentenced to four years in prison
According to his plea agreement, Wiederhold falsely assured at least two women that their videos would not be posted online after he knew other women’s videos had already been uploaded to the Internet.
Prosecutors say that for years, the owners and operators of GirlsDoPorn coerced and deceived hundreds of women into appearing in online pornographic videos by falsely assuring them that their videos would be distributed only to private customers on DVDs or other physical platforms, when they always intended to post the videos on the Internet.
Wiederhold, whose plea agreement states he took part in the conspiracy from 2011 to 2012, was charged nearly four years after most of the defendants in the case, including website owner Michael James Pratt.
During Friday’s sentencing hearing, defense attorney Patrick Griffin argued that his client was far less involved in GirlsDoPorn’s criminal activities than any of the other defendants.
Griffin said Wiederhold “agreed” with Pratt’s false statements and did not contradict his lies, but denied that his client actively participated in deceiving the women.
Weiderhold apologized in court and said he was “ashamed” of his role in the crimes, while Griffin said his client “has immense remorse and shame” for his participation in the deception.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexandra Foster said Wiederhold was the “nice guy, the friendly face, the one who gave (the victims) the assurance that things would be OK,” even though she knew they were being lied to.
The prosecutor highlighted one text message in which a woman notified Wiederhold that the video in which they appeared had been posted online.
He denied knowing how the video got there, but when the woman sent him a link, he ignored her and stopped responding, Foster said. After that conversation, Wiederhold continued to work for GirlsDoPorn for almost a year, according to the prosecutor.
As with other sentencings in the case, U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino heard statements from several women who spoke about the impact the distribution of their videos had on them.
One victim objected to Wiederhold distancing himself from Pratt and his involvement in turning GirlsDoPorn into a sex trafficking enterprise.
Before the video she made with Wiederhold, she said he already knew that videos of other women had been uploaded online.
“Your involvement was not incidental or passive,” the woman said. “You helped build the machine.”
Griffin had asked Sammartino to impose a one-year prison sentence, but the judge said prison time was warranted.
Sammartino, who presided over the case from the beginning and convicted all defendants, commented on the unique nature of the crimes before imposing the four-year prison sentence.
“It is clear to the court that what happened in this case will cause long-lasting damage. Some of that damage will be lifelong,” the judge said. “I’ve never had a case like this and I think that’s a good thing.”
Pratt was sentenced to 27 years in prison last year. He was on the run for three years before his arrest and was once on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted list. Others sentenced include 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.
Outside of criminal cases, at the end of a civil lawsuit, a group of women were awarded nearly $13 million by a San Diego judge for activities involving GirlsDoPorn.
The website also led to lawsuits from more than 100 women against the parent company of the streaming site PornHub for allegedly profiting from GirlsDoPorn’s human trafficking by hosting its videos.
The company reached settlements with the women in both lawsuits and also agreed to pay more than $1.8 million to resolve an investigation by federal prosecutors who alleged that the company knew or should have known that it was accepting money from sex trafficking operations.
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