Thread: FBI Most Wanted - New Zealand pornographer makes the Top 10

Fugitive GirlsDoPorn boss added to FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list

SAN DIEGO — Federal officials announced Wednesday that Michael James Pratt, the GirlsDoPorn boss at the center of a federal sex-trafficking prosecution, has been added to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list. The 39-year-old New Zealand native is the first person in 25 years to make the list from the FBI’s San Diego field office. As part of his addition to the list, authorities doubled the previous reward for information leading to his arrest to $100,000.

Pratt joins a list that contains five murder suspects, a sixth man wanted in a murder-for-hire attempt, the alleged top leader of the MS-13 gang in Honduras and a Bulgarian woman suspected of running a $4 billion cryptocurrency fraud.

Pratt came to San Diego from New Zealand in 2012. He started the pornography website, which featured women appearing in their first pornographic videos.

Prosecutors allege the subscription pornography site generated more than $17 million in revenue. Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexandra Foster said Wednesday that Pratt “has access to significant funds.” Authorities have said Pratt “has the financial means to be anywhere around the world,” is receiving support from others and has ties to multiple countries, including Australia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Singapore, Japan, Chile, Croatia and France.

The accent could be his downfall:
NZ News: The FBI says Pratt is 6ft tall with brown hair and hazel eyes, and speaks with a New Zealand accent. He has ties to New Zealand and Australia, and the financial means to travel the world.
Several of Pratt’s co-conspirators have faced justice for their roles in the scheme. The websites’ cameraman and its bookkeeper each pleaded guilty to trafficking charges in 2021. One of the websites’ lead recruiters and producers, Ruben Garcia, of San Diego, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the trafficking conspiracy. Pratt’s alleged co-owner, Matthew Wolfe, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion. Wolfe is scheduled to be sentenced in October.


Link: FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives

Not much in the way of gender-equality in the Top Ten, however Ruja the crypto queen is there



Inside the life and crimes of the new addition to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Ruja Ignatova

...the 42-year-old Ignatova remains on the lam after having vanished in 2017 with a fortune — leaving customers to eat some $4 billion in losses and her ex-partners to face jail time.
...Her worth could be in the billions, Bartlett surmises, due to a 2015 deal Ignatova made with an Emirati royal, Sheikh Saud bin Faisal al Qassimi. She’d traded him access to a frozen bank account with €50 million in exchange for 230,000 Bitcoins, which, if she kept them, would be worth €9 billion today.