Pornhub’s Parent Company, Aylo To Pay $1.8 Million Fine After It Admitted Profiting From Sex Trafficking

Aylo Holdings, the parent company to popular pornographic video site, Pornhub, has acknowledged in an agreement with federal prosecutors this week that it hosted adult videos featuring women who were coerced into performing sex acts on camera by a production company.

Part of the deferred prosecution agreement is that Aylo will pay a $1.8 million fine and compensate the sex trafficking victims.

Though Aylo Holdings pleaded not guilty to the government’s charge of engaging in unlawful monetary transactions involving sex trafficking proceeds, it acknowledged the illegal material was posted on its site and said it regrets that fact.

 Aylo was not directly accused of violating any federal sex trafficking laws by the government, but said the company should have known it was doing business with a group that was engaging in sex trafficking.

Aylo now be subject to monitoring for three years, and the charges against the company would be dropped if it complies with its agreement.

 

Court documents showing Aylo's admission says a production company between 2017 to 2019 paid it to stream its pornography that it knew included videos featuring women who did not give their consent for the content to be posted online.

The company in 2016, began receiving requests from women who appeared in the videos to take down the videos, as they told the company they were lied to.

Court documents show Aylo became aware of a federal lawsuit against the production company in 2017 but it did not follow through with all the takedown requests, nor did it attempt to independently verify that the women consented to have the videos appear on the internet, prosecutors said. 

Even the production company’s videos were yanked off Pornhub by Aylo in 2019, some of the same videos were reposted by other users and remained online, according to court documents.

 Aylo, under a new management since the alleged incidents occurred, in a statement said it “deeply regrets” that Pornhub hosted the content.

“We were troubled to learn that a production company used criminal means to produce its content and submitted consent documentation that we now know was obtained by fraud and coercion,” the company said in its statement. “We must be vigilant to stop those seeking to use our platforms illegally, and to respond to ever changing threats and challenges.”

Breon Peace, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in a statement said the deferred prosecution agreement holds “the parent company of Pornhub.com accountable for its role in hosting videos.”

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI, also said Aylo should have acted more quickly to remove the videos.

“Motivated by profit, Aylo Holdings knowingly enriched itself by turning a blind eye to the concerns of victims who communicated to the company that they were deceived and coerced into participating in illicit sexual activity,” said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge James Smith in a statement.