The defendant, Matthew Isaac Wolfe, is the fourth person associated with the GirlsDoPorn site to plead guilty, including its owner Michael Pratt, in a case that has shined a light on abuses within the adult film industry.
The operators of the site repeatedly lied to their actresses, manipulating and offering false promises, and even coercing them to engage in unwanted sexual activity on camera. Wolfe, who along with managing the site’s accounting worked as a cameraman, filmed over a 100 videos for the outlet.
“To persuade women to appear in the videos, Wolfe admitted to telling women that the videos would never be posted on-line, that the videos would never be released in the United States, and that no one who knew the women would ever find out about the videos, representations that he knew were false, because the videos were exclusively marketed and distributed on the internet,” the DOJ explained.
Beyond coercing the women into acts they were not comfortable with, Wolfe and Pratt would later expose their identities on a second site they ran and that was called pornwikileaks.
“This crime had a devastating impact on the victims,” U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman said.
“Wolfe lied to and preyed on vulnerable young women, subjecting them to years of relentless harassment, fear and mental anguish,” added Stacey Moy, special agent in charge of the FBI San Diego Field Office.
Wolfe also helped train another of the site's cameramen, Theodore Gyi who pleaded guilty to similar charges in 2021.
“Gyi admitted that over the course of his employment, he became aware that Matthew Wolfe and Michael Pratt were posting many of the sex videos that he filmed on GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys,” the DOJ said after Gyi’s case.
