A former videographer for a San Diego porn company that has been accused of luring young women into appearing in sex videos admitted in court Thursday that he knowingly lied to the women.
Videographer Teddy Gyi testified in the lawsuit that 22 women filed against the pornography website, Girls Do Porn, and its owner Michael Pratt, main videographer Matthew Wolfe, and the actor and director Ruben “Andre” Garcia. NBC 7 Investigates first reported on the alleged scheme in February of this year.
That scheme, according to the women who filed the lawsuit, and several women NBC 7 interviewed, involved the men posting ads on Craigslist for modeling gigs in cities and college towns across North America. When the women answered the ads, what was a modeling gig turned into an offer of up to $7,000 for a 30-minute pornographic shoot. The women say they were repeatedly told that the videos would be sold to private collectors on DVD format in countries such as Australia and New Zealand. The company also paid other women to lie to the prospective models, as one former so-called “reference girl” testified last week, that they had shot similar videos and no one ever found out.
Instead, those videos were later posted on Girls Do Porn’s website as well as on popular tube channels such as PornHub, and YouPorn - considered to be among the most popular websites in the world.
In his testimony, Gyi confirmed that he was instructed to tell the women that the videos would never appear online.
Gyi also testified that he had heard the actor and director Garcia tell the women on numerous occasions that “it was DVD only and they were sent to Australia.”
“I heard [Garcia] tell women the videos would not be posted online,” testified Gyi.
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His response as to whether he corrected Garcia when he heard him say that: “I did not.”
During his time as videographer Gyi shot more than 100 videos in hotel rooms throughout San Diego as well as in New York City.
Gyi also testified that despite telling the women that the videos would not be posted online that among his job tasks were to post clips of the videos on PornHub and other large conglomerate sites.
The trial is now in its second week. Since beginning, several plaintiffs, known only as Jane Does, testified about how the men allegedly tricked them into agreeing to have sex in video.
In a new podcast from NBC 7 Investigates called INSIGHT, journalists Dorian Hargrove and Tom Jones share some of the women’s stories who were featured in these videos and what they uncovered about the Girls Do Porn website, including the company’s ties to shell companies that were charged with laundering billions of dollars for a Mexican drug cartel and trafficking illegal weapons.
To listen to that podcast, click here or hit ‘Play’ below.