The FBI seized $51,533 Bitcoin From a wallet belonging to Michael Pratt, a New Zealand pornographic artist who was arrested in 2022 on charges related to sex trafficking.
US authorities filed a forfeiture order against Pratt and his accomplice in July 2024, including a request to seize three Bitcoin wallets, including a total of 8.13 BTC.
This is now $840,000 in Bitcoin prices today, and according to a forfeiture notice posted by the FBI today, the agency successfully won a total of 0.61096499 BTC.
A New Zealanderian, Pratt moved to the United States in 2009 and is reportedly running the GirlsDoporn website between 2007 and 2019.
In October 2019, he was charged with absenteeism in the Southern District of California with sex trafficking crimes.
The FBI added Pratt to the 10 most wanted list in early 2022, offering $50,000 to anyone who could provide information that would lead to an arrest.
He was eventually arrested by a Spanish local government in December 2022. He was subsequently charged with 19 crimes including sex trafficking, the production of child pornography and conspiracy to wash his money.
He was handed over to the US in March 2024. At the time, a public court filing revealed the full scope and nature of his alleged crime.
He and his co-defendants are accused of using deception and coercion to recruit hundreds of young women, including a small number of minors, to perform in the content of Girls’ Dopawn.
The victims, recruited throughout the US and Canada, responded to the ads to model clothing jobs, but were later said they filmed adult content that was related to the work.
Pratt and his co-defendants assured the victim that the video would be available only to private Australian buyers and not posted online.
The accused also told the woman that filming (mainly filming in San Diego) would be short. However, the victim said filming could take several hours and that some women were forced to do things they disagreed with.
And, contrary to Pratt’s promise, he and his accomplice have released clips of the video on popular adult websites such as Porn Hub to drive traffic towards a full-length version of Girls Doporn.
The website is said to have earned more than $17 million in revenue from Pratt via subscription fees, but it was closed in January 2020 after a San Diego judge ordered 22 women to pay $12.8 million in damages.
Pratt’s companions, including webmaster Matthew Isaac Wolf and male performer Reuben Andre Garcia, have already pleaded guilty and are sentenced to crimes related to their respective roles in the conspiracy.
However, Pratt filed a plea of innocence and awaited the start of his trial in September.
According to Business Insider Article, Pratt was finally placed as a result of the 2020 ledger hack, revealing personal information of over 200,000 customers of French companies.
This included Pratt, who used his real name to ship his ledger wallet to him at a hotel in Barcelona.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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