SAN DIEGO, Calif.—Considering that the civil fraud/breach of contract trial which pits 22 "Jane Does" against GirlsDoPorn.com, its owner Michael Pratt, videographer Matthew Wolfe and actor/director Andre Garcia is now in its tenth week, one might have thought that by now, the site would have taken down all the videos the Jane Does are suing about having been posted without their permission—but one would be wrong.
Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that the site and its owner have made $1,025,831.50 in total from the Jane Doe videos, a figure agreed upon yesterday by attorneys for both sides—during which discussion it was revealed that at least ten Jane Doe videos are still available on GirlsDoPorn.com, but are "in the process of being removed," according to GirlsDoPorn’s attorney Aaron Sadock, as reported by Courthouse News journalist Bianca Bruno.
But that revelation may not even be the biggest shock of the day. Seems that GirlsDoPorn has another 200 videos of women who answered its Craigslist ad for "models" sitting around as yet unpublished. Yesterday, financial expert Robert Taylor testified for the plaintiffs at the hearing before Superior Court Judge Kevin Enright that such videos, if published or sold to other adult sites, could bring in at least $4 million to Pratt and the company. Taylor called the figure a "reasonable estimate of what they could expect to make from a subscriber base interested in these types of videos."
Pratt remains at large and is reportedly living in New Zealand, and appears to have no intention to return to the U.S. to face his Jane Doe accusers—or the federal indictment handed down against him in early October for sex trafficking. But Pratt is not by any measure living in poverty in his native country, with Taylor noting that the projected income for Pratt and the company doesn't even include the money Pratt made from selling his Rancho Santa Fe home last year—nor whatever amount he realized from selling his Lamborghini at about the same time, all reportedly in an effort to hide such funds from the Jane Does should he and the company lose the current case. Those funds could also be seized by the federal government to attempt to force Pratt back to the U.S. to face his criminal charges—if the money can be located, and depending on the treaties the U.S. has with whatever country is currently "hosting" Pratt's bank account(s).
But the alleged financial concealment testimony was hardly the only thing of interest at yesterday's hearing. A videotaped deposition of Alicia McKay was also played in court—and while McKay isn't a plaintiff in the case, she testified that she too was one of the women lured from her home in Canada in 2016 by a Craigslist ad to come to San Diego to film hardcore videos—which she too was told would never be seen in the United States. Based on the representations of Andre Garcia, McKay not only bought the idea that the videos would only be seen internationally, he even convinced her to be a "reference woman" for other amateur women who were considering allowing GirlsDoPorn to shoot scenes with them, with Garcia asking her to "downplay it as much as possible" when the women asked where the videos would be published, and to assure them that if they came to San Diego for the shoot, they would not be raped or killed, and they would get paid.
And McKay did just that—until she found out that the company had indeed posted her own performance online. And how did she discover that? Easy: she found a screenshot of the video on her boyfriend’s cellphone!
Unfortunately for the company, McKay recorded at least one phone conversation she had with Garcia because "I wasn’t getting any straight answers from them" about where the videos would be seen.
"Everything they said that was important was over the phone," McKay said in her videotaped deposition. "Everything over text was very vague.
"I had recorded the video because I believed they were falsifying information," she added. "They weren’t telling the full truth to women. I wanted proof of that because like they had done to me, they never gave me a full answer of where the videos would be distributed."
McKay's report of her phone call with Garcia comes on the heels of testimony heard last Thursday from an additional plaintiffs' witness, identified in court as "Jane Doe A," who while not a plaintiff in the lawsuit nevertheless suffered the same fate as all of the other Jane Does.
According to another report by Bianca Bruno, Doe A said she found out on September 10, 21 days after trial commenced, that a video she shot with GirlsDoPorn actor Andre Garcia in August at the Omni Hotel in downtown San Diego had been published online to the porn website Image Post. Doe A had been unaware of the trial, and when she found out, she immediately contacted the plaintiffs' attorneys.
Doe A's situation differs slightly from that of the other Jane Does. Rather than telling Doe A that her video would not appear online but only on DVDs sold overseas, Garcia told her that though the scene would be online, it would only be published "on an elite, members-only website overseas and would not be accessible in the U.S."
Unsurprisingly, that turned out to be a lie, and when Doe A received links to her scene from family and friends, she asked Garcia via text to help her get the video offline, and even offered to return half of the $6,000 she'd been paid for the scene if he'd take it down.
"I’m about to have a panic attack," Doe A's text message to Garcia read. "This is so bad. Please, please, please. I’m begging you."
Garcia responded that he would put her in touch with his attorney to get the video taken down, but he never did, and when Doe A continued to plead with him, and finally threatened to sue, Garcia's response was, "Do it. Best of luck."
It is unknown whether Jane Doe A will receive any of the proceeds of the current lawsuit if the plaintiffs win.
And in other GirlsDoPorn news, a preliminary hearing on the criminal charges against the company, Pratt and his employees is scheduled for this Thursday, November 7.
