Spanish police arrest GirlsDoPorn owner, one of FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives
Michael J. Pratt, operator of the pornography production company that used young women and minors to make sex videos, was detained in a Madrid hotel
Members of Spain’s National Police on Friday arrested Michael J. Pratt, one of the FBI’s most wanted criminals. Pratt, 40, was placed on the US agency’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in early September after being charged with sex crimes in connection with his GirlsDoPorn and GirslDoToys websites.
The New Zealand national was detained at a Madrid hotel following a year-long investigation that first placed Pratt in Barcelona. It is the first time that a criminal included on the FBI’s most wanted list has been located in Spain. The majority of these fugitives are usually in the United States, and only 57 have been captured in other countries.
The FBI issued a warrant after Pratt was charged with conspiracy to commit sex trafficking by force, child pornography and several other sex crimes. One of the victims was under 18.
Pratt deceived minors and young women into participating in pornographic videos. The FBI said that, according to the investigation, the women were promised that the videos were for a private collector overseas and that they would remain anonymous. “But the videos were indeed posted online, and Pratt’s pornography websites, GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys, made millions of dollars in revenue from the videos between approximately 2012 and 2019,” said the FBI release.
“Pratt has victimized hundreds of young women through the course of this conspiracy,” said Supervisory Special Agent Renee Green with the FBI’s San Diego Field Office.
“Pratt and his co-conspirators allegedly used internet advertisements, along with fake websites and email addresses, to recruit young women for modeling jobs. Only after the victims responded to the advertisements would Pratt and others disclose that they were actually seeking women for pornographic video shoots, according to charging documents,” said the FBI.
Pratt is the second individual on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list to be captured this year. The first was Rafael Caro Quintero, known as “El Narco de Narcos” in the 1980s, who was arrested on July 15 in Mexico. Caro Quintero had already been in prison in 1985 for the brutal murder of Kiki Camarena, an infiltrated DEA agent, but in 2013 he was released when he still had 12 years to serve.
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