SAN DIEGO (CN) — A federal judge on Monday ordered the cameraman for GirlsDoPorn, a now-defunct San Diego-based porn site embroiled in a yearslong case involving multiple charges of sex trafficking, to pay more than $100,000 in restitution to two of his victims.
Theodore Wilfred Gyi, who shot over 100 videos for GirlsDoPorn and its offshoot, GirlsDoToys, pleaded guilty in 2021 to one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking through his work with the operators of the website, Matthew Wolfe and Michael Pratt, to coerce young women to appear in porn videos. In 2022, a federal judge sentenced Gyi to four years in prison.
Now U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino ordered Gyi to pay $31,508.11 in restitution to one victim and $72,341 to another. Both victims are identified only by their initials in the restitution order.
According to Sammartino's order, Gyi has the ability to pay the restitution but not interest, so she waived the interest requirement.
While he’s in prison, Gyi will pay 50% of his income made through the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program, or $25 per quarter, whichever is a greater amount of money. When he gets out of prison, Gyi will be required to pay at least $200 per month.
The order also strips Gyi of the rights to images and videos he produced while at GirlsDoPorn or GirlsDoToys and transfers those rights to the victims.
Gyi worked with Wolfe and Pratt from 2015 to 2017.
He told the court during testimony in his case in 2019 that he was directed to tell women appearing in the videos he shot the videos would not be posted online, even though he knew videos had been uploaded online and had received a complaint from a woman who claimed she was lied to.
Twenty-two Jane Does sued GirlsDoPorn in 2016 on claims the company engaged in a bait-and-switch scheme to get them to agree to shoot pornography after responding to job listings for clothed modeling gigs on Craigslist.
The women claimed they agreed to film porn after they were told the videos would never be published online, but instead were for a private collector in Australia or would be sold as DVDs overseas.
But the videos were posted to the GirlsDoPorn website, with highlight clips posted on free websites such as PornHub to drive traffic and subscriptions to GirlsDoPorn.
The site generated millions of dollars of funds from subscriptions to the websites.
Gyi was also tasked with having models fill out contracts including a nondisclosure agreement and model release form and contract which said the videos may be used “for any purpose.”
He said he would present the models with the documents they had to sign prior to hitting the record button. He said he gave them the “gist” of what the documents stated and checked that their identification showed they were over 18, but he never actually read the documents or knew the contents.
Wolfe pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking in 2022. Pratt fled the U.S. and was captured in Madrid by the Spanish National Police in 2022. When he's extradited, Pratt will face 19 counts including sex trafficking, production of child pornography, sex trafficking of a minor, and conspiracy to launder money in connection with the GirlsDoPorn website.
Other co-defendants in the case include site bookkeeper Valorie Moser, who also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking in 2021, and actor and producer Ruben Andre Garcia, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison on sex trafficking charges in 2020.
In 2020, a judge in San Diego awarded the 22 Jane Does who sued the website nearly $13 million in damages over the rights to videos they’d sought. The women later won nearly $8 million in attorney’s fees and $781,000 in costs for a total judgment of $21 million.
But they’ve yet to recover any of the damages because of a complicated bankruptcy case in Nevada, and legal malpractice proceedings making its way through the San Diego County Superior Court.
In 2022, attorneys who represented a “mom” porn affiliate website during the civil trial against GirlsDoPorn repeatedly declined to settle with the 22 Jane Does who sued the porn empire and now the empire is on the hook for a $21 million judgment, a bankruptcy trustee claims in a legal malpractice suit.
The individual Jane Does are now named as creditors in Domi's Chapter 7 bankruptcy, filed in Nevada.
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