SAN DIEGO—Just when it seemed that the cases involving adult website Girls Do Porn, its owner Michael Pratt, videographer Matthew Wolfe and actor/director Reuben "Andre" Garcia couldn't get any more convoluted, the feds have indicted two more individuals, brothers Fredrick and Efrain Jimenez, with one count each of "obstructing sex trafficking enforcement."
The evidence? According to an article in Tuesday's Los Angeles Times, sheriff's deputies found the brothers removing and destroying various items from Pratt's Hidden Meadows home near San Diego, where the mogul had been living before fleeing to his native New Zealand last summer, shortly before the civil trial began, in which 22 Jane Does had accused Pratt and his co-defendants of filming them in hardcore scenes which the GirlsDoPorn owner and employees had promised would never be seen in the U.S.—and then promptly supplying such scenes to Pornhub and various other hardcore sites.
But in October, the U.S. Attorney for the San Diego area also charged Pratt, Wolfe and Garcia, along with other Girls Do Porn employees—administrative assistant Valorie Moser, recruiter Amberlyn Dee Nored and videographer Theodore "Teddy" Gyi—with production of child porn and sex trafficking of a minor after it was discovered that the company had filmed a 16-year-old girl in hardcore action.
"On Oct. 13—three days after the federal complaint was unsealed and the first round of arrests were made—sheriff’s deputies were called to the Hidden Meadows community," the Times reported. "A neighbor had reported seeing two unknown individuals emptying the contents of a home on Cerveza Baja Drive into a U-Haul trailer, according to an affidavit filed by the U.S. Marshals Service ... Deputies found the Jimenez brothers there. They told the deputies that a friend named 'Mark' had borrowed their property and that he had given the brothers a key to the house and asked them to remove their personal property, the affidavit states. 'Mark' is a nickname that Pratt used, according to investigators."
While the deputies didn't make a detailed examination of the trailer at the time, but only took pictures, petsitters that had previously had access to the home had told investigators that at least as late as July, the home contained multiple computers and other computer equipment, all of which appeared to have been running, according to an affidavit from the petsitters, but that soon after the indictments were unveiled, the sitters said they noticed all the equipment had been removed, with only some wires remaining.
The Jimenez brothers, one of whom had been employed by GirlsDoPorn for a few months in 2018 and 2019, told the arresting officers that they had removed mostly furniture, TVs and camping equipment from the home, though the deputies did notice some small portable air conditioners in the trailer, described as a type "often used to keep electronic equipment cool to ensure these expensive pieces of equipment do not overheat and malfunction." The feds had already seized several computers, hard drives, disks, DVDs and tapes from the GirlsDoPorn office in downtown San Diego.
Meanwhile, the 22 Jane Does still await a verdict in their civil case which completed testimony and argument in late November, and which San Diego Superior Court Judge Kevin Enright heard without a jury and has been considering his verdict for the past month. The federal defendants had their preliminary hearing in early November, and trial is expected to begin sometime this spring—most likely without Pratt's presence, since it is unclear whether federal authorities will be able to extradict him back to the U.S. on the trafficking charges.
