MONTREAL — The Montreal-founded company behind Pornhub and other adult titles said it has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement to resolve a U.S. federal criminal investigation regarding its relationship with a sex-trafficking website.

As The Logic reported on Thursday, U.S. prosecutors are pursuing Aylo, formerly known as MindGeek, in connection with what they allege was “knowing and intentional engagement in monetary transactions involving the proceeds of sex trafficking by the operators of GirlsDoPorn.com and GirlsDoToys.com.” The federal investigation of the firm lasted 30 months, according to Aylo’s statement.

“After an extensive investigation by the United States Attorney’s Office and the FBI, the United States Attorney’s Office and Aylo have agreed to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement related to allegations that Aylo engaged in an unlawful monetary transaction with the production company GirlsDoPorn/GirlsDoToys,” the statement reads. Aylo said the charge will be dismissed after three years if the court approves the deal and the company complies with its terms.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office hasn’t released the details of the agreement, and spokesperson John Marzulli declined to comment on Aylo’s release in an email to The Logic. 

However, Aylo said in its statement that, as part of the agreement, it will allow independent third-party monitoring “to assess its compliance program” for the next three years. The company also said it voluntarily agreed to make payments to the victims of GirlsDoPorn, though it was not immediately clear whether that commitment was part of the DPA stipulations.

A deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) is a negotiated procedure allowing individuals and corporations to avoid criminal convictions by acknowledging responsibility for their acts. It can include the payment of restitution and to comply with ongoing investigations. In return, criminal charges are either dropped or go unpursued.

“You cannot put a corporation in jail. So a DPA is a good way for the U.S. Attorney’s Office to force Aylo to help the victims and clean up its act,” said California-based lawyer Brian Holm, who is representing 130 women in U.S. civil suits against Aylo.

Aylo is owned by Ethical Capital Partners (ECP), a British Virgin Islands-based private equity firm with its principal offices in Ottawa. “Regarding details surrounding the investigation, unfortunately we will not be commenting further,” ECP vice-president Sarah Bain wrote in a statement.

GirlsDoPorn was a Pornhub content partner between 2011 and 2019. In 2019, a California judge found that the site’s producers lured women to San Diego with promises of clothed  modelling work. Once there, they were coaxed into performing sex acts on camera. Though the producers promised content wouldn’t be posted online, it was in fact posted on sites including Pornhub, where it garnered hundreds of millions of views.

Many of the women asked Pornhub to remove the content as early as 2015, but said it remained on the site regardless. MindGeek removed the content in 2019, following the judgment against GirlsDoPorn.

Aylo is the subject of several ongoing lawsuits alleging that child sexual-abuse material appeared on Pornhub, including the case of Serena Fleites, the subject of the 2020 New York Times column that said Pornhub was “infested with rape videos.” 

In an email, Bain declined to comment about those cases. 

With files from Aleksandra Sagan