9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden once featured, so did notorious serial killer Ted Bundy and Dr Martin Luther King's assassin James Earl Ray. And now, a Kiwi sex trafficker and pornography crook has made the infamous FBI Top 10 Most Wanted list. Agents worldwide are hunting fugitive Michael James Pratt,
NZ pornographer Michael James Pratt on FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted list
New Zealander Michael James Pratt has been named on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list. Photo / Supplied
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The gig was up. He could sense the feds circling. The lucrative pornography production company and websites GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys, where he tricked women into becoming online porn stars, had raked in more than US$17m ($30m). But now, he needed to cash in the proceeds of his seedy empire or urgently convert them to cryptocurrency. If they caught up with him, he might never see daylight again.
And so, Pratt, one day, simply vanished. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) nor, allegedly, any of his family, haven't seen him since. He is a ghost.
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Yulan Adonay Archaga Carias, aka "Porky", is an alleged strategist for the vicious global street gang MS-13, smuggling multi-ton loads of cocaine from Honduras to the US. He's on the list, alongside Mexican drug cartel "plaza boss" Rodolfo Villarreal Hernandez, aka "El Gato", wanted over a 2013 contract killing in Texas.
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Bhadreshkumar Chetanbhai Patel is accused of bashing his wife to death at a Maryland doughnut shop, while Arnoldo Jimenez allegedly murdered his new bride in his black Maserati just hours after their wedding. Alexis Flores allegedly kidnapped and murdered a 5-year-old girl.
They're all on the run – and have gained criminal gold-standard notoriety by being included on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list.
For the past 73 years, more than 500 fugitives have been named and shamed, with posters tacked up in post offices coast to coast and 93 per cent of the fugitives "captured or located".
It all began with a 1949 conversation between then heavyweight, controversial FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and a newspaperman over ways to help identify the "toughest guys" under investigation.
The FBI provided photos of 10 dangerous fugitives, including bank robbers and murder suspects fleeing state lines, which were published on the Washington Daily News front page.
Since then, it has evolved into helping track serial killers, terrorists, cybercriminals and white-collar crooks, including some of the most infamous names in modern history such as Osama bin Laden, Ted Bundy and James Earl Ray.
So how did a promising product of Christchurch Boys' High School join the ranks of such a monstrous assembly? And why does an FBI agent, who spoke to the Herald, feel so confident that Pratt will eventually slip up?
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Tall and slim, the young Pratt of 1997 looks pensive. With pursed lips, he appears reserved yet intrigued. The fourth former gives the patient photographer an inquiring gaze, perhaps wishing he was the one behind the camera, calling the shots.
"He was pretty quiet and a bit weird but nobody paid him much attention. I guess that's all changed now," one of Pratt's schoolboy contemporaries told the Herald.
Growing up, one of his closest friends was Matthew Isaac Wolfe. They went to primary school together and although they parted ways for secondary school – Wolfe attending Burnside in the west of the city and Pratt going to Boys' High – they remained close.
And fresh out of school, as the Internet boom began, the precocious youngsters went into business together. Their choice of industry, the burgeoning online porn market, was one they kept quiet from family and friends.
In 2000, still in their teens, they launched three websites: Wicked Movies, TeenieFlixxx and Kute Kittens, which showed short, free clips of X-rated content where users clicked through to subscription-only pornography sites.
Pratt and Wolfe earned commission for the web traffic they directed to the paid sites but six years later Pratt took steps to cut out the middleman and produce pornography for his own subscription website, GirlsDoPorn.
The business model surrounded amateur young women, aged 18 to 22, who "looked like the girl next door" and who had never appeared in adult videos before.
"This is the one and only time they do porn," the website boasted.
Pratt moved to the States – later joined by Wolfe – and in 2009 launched the subscription service from San Diego, California.
It was a runaway success. While the website was locked for subscribers only, GirlsDoPorn marketed itself by sharing - for free - short video clips on some of the busiest websites in the world.
According to court documents, these videos have been watched a billion times, not to mention the pirated versions that generated views in the hundreds of millions.
In 2014, Pratt, who was not a citizen of the United States, launched two spin-off sites: Mom POV, featuring older amateur women, and GirlsDoToys with Wolfe.
The websites have generated US$17m in revenue, according to financial records.
But the shady business was even murkier – and exploitative - than it seemed.
Prosecutors in the States say that Pratt, who ran the now-defunct websites for around seven years, coerced hundreds of women to appear in pornographic videos under false pretences.
They allege that Pratt – along with Wolfe and others – lured unsuspecting women with adverts for clothed modelling gigs.
The women, many of whom were struggling financially, were offered between US$3000 and US$5000 as payment, as well as an "all expenses" trip to San Diego.
"They repeatedly assure the victims they will never publish the videos online and that the women will remain anonymous," according to a civil claim which has subsequently been successful in the US courts.
When it was revealed that the job involved filming for adult videos, the victims were led to believe that the footage would only be distributed to private customers in far-off places like Australia or New Zealand.
However, the videos soon showed up online, which prosecutors say was always the plan of Pratt, Wolfe and a third individual, an American man named Ruben Andre Garcia, a porn actor and producer already sentenced to 20 years in prison.
If the women ever changed their minds about filming or completing the scenes, they were threatened with legal action, or told their flights home would be cancelled, or the footage would be sent to friends or family.
In a civil class action judgment obtained by the Herald, 22 anonymous plaintiffs, known only as "Jane Does", have each been awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in "compensatory and punitive damages".
After a 99-day bench trial, the judge found they had all been victims of "intentional misrepresentation, concealment, false promise and misappropriation of likeness".
The court awarded damages totalling more than US$20m to the women, plus all recoverable costs, attorneys' fees and interest, with each to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation.
The decision found that all of the defendants, including Pratt, Wolfe, Garcia and their various companies, were "jointly and severally" liable as "alter egos of each other under the single business enterprise theory".
Representing the Jane Does, San Diego attorney Brian Holm said that even if Pratt was found abroad, there were ways of recovering any of his assets that were identified. It was a different story for 40-year-old Wolfe, however, who is in custody awaiting sentence in February and has no ability to pay, with no assets being found so far, Holm said.
Holm believes the millions that Pratt earned will likely be funding his hideout.
"Obviously, he had to pay some people, and I'm sure he pissed a lot of it away – he wasn't the most frugal person - but I presume he has converted a lot to crypto and is living abroad on it," Holm told the Herald.
But with Pratt, who turns 40 next month, becoming a high-ticket FBI target, Holm hopes it will shed some new light on his whereabouts.
"I have never had any of the defendants in my civil cases make the [FBI] top 10 list. It will clearly raise awareness and publicity of it all," said Holm, who added that Pratt has become a notorious figure in the States.
"Over here, whenever anyone asks where [Pratt] is from and I say Christchurch, as in 'Christ' 'Church', they say that sounds like an oxymoron for this guy, being the devil that he is."
For the victims, Pratt's capture is the "last step of closure" now that his co-offenders have been convicted, Holm said.
FBI San Diego field office supervisory special agent Renee Green told the Herald there have been "numerous" tip-offs and sightings relating to Pratt over the last three years.
The FBI, Green says, is confident that Pratt will be found, despite admitting he has the "financial means and experience" to be "hiding anywhere around the world", with contacts in multiple countries, including Australia where a sister lives, as well as Europe, Singapore, Japan and South America.
"We also consider Pratt to be persuasive and manipulative and he could very likely be promising gifts and/or money to people who will help him hide from justice," said Green, who also called him "very dangerous".
There's also a chance he could be hiding in plain sight, in New Zealand.
While it appears that Pratt returned home straight from fleeing Mexico, there's nothing to suggest that he ever left.
Green said it's possible that he might see New Zealand, where he has family and old friends, as a "safe haven".
Pratt's mother, Sharon, has remarried and lives in Auckland under a new surname.
When she was approached by the Herald at home this week, she said she knew nothing.
"I haven't a clue where Mike is," she said.
"I don't want to be hassled but I feel really terrible about what's happened."
New Zealand Police were also tight-lipped around Pratt – whose aliases, the FBI says, include Michael J. Pratt and Mark Pratt - and the ongoing manhunt.
"Police are unable to comment on this matter for operational reasons," a spokeswoman said.
A spokesman at Interpol's headquarters in Lyon, France, said when police in any of the global organisation's 195 member countries share information with them, the details remain under the ownership of that member country.
"Interpol does not, therefore, comment on specific cases or individuals except in special circumstances and with the approval of the member country concerned," he said.
But the FBI remains confident that, despite any current concrete leads, Pratt will slip up, and the publicity from the infamous FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitive list, plus the US$100,000 reward and the resources that go with it, will one day lead to his arrest.
"I am certain that Pratt will be caught," says special agent Green.
"We have agents all over the world who are actively looking for Pratt."
