Laila Mickelwait
Appearances
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I thought you were going to say per year or something. Per day.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Exactly. That was how they were making most of their money on free porn. So free porn is not free. Yes, it's heavily monetized. It has a high human cost, clearly. But 20% of that would be pay-to-download content where you could enter into this profit-sharing relationship with Pornhub where you could put the content behind a paywall. You have to pay to download that content.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And in one horrific case, there was a 12-year-old boy from Alabama and he was drugged and he was overpowered and he was raped by a man named Rocky Shea Franklin who had one of those profit-sharing pay-to-download relationships with Pornhub. And he filmed the assaults and he uploaded 23 of those videos to Pornhub. with titles indicating that they were abused.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And this is important when we talk about complicity, because Pornhub in its defense made a huge mistake.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They had 10 people working per eight-hour shift, but they do say, we had somebody viewing, manually proving every single video before it went live on the site. That's not true. But if it was true... That means that they were approving videos with a 12-year-old drug boy with titles such as Uncle Secret, Young Ass is Best, things that would clearly say this is a child.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And then once it was discovered, he was a verified uploader in this pay-to-download relationship. And then police found out they reached out multiple times to Pornhub demanding the videos come down. They were ignored multiple times. It stayed up for seven months, getting hundreds of thousands of views.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
All monetized. So he was arrested and now he's sentenced to 40 years in prison and the boy is suing Pornhub.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, this poor kid. Well, originally he stood with his mom, and then he became old enough to just do it on his own.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
When they say, we viewed and approved, that means that complicity— was even deeper if they're trying to say that. Why would they say that?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
We know it wasn't true because moderators through the course of this came forward to me and to investigators and to the attorneys and all of that and produced documents and schedules showing that they had 10 or under moderators per shift working not only on Pornhub because Pornhub was owned by a parent company. MindGeek. MindGeek, who had...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
earned virtually a monopoly on the mainstream, most popular global porn sites and industry.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So with a $362 million loan from Colbeck Capital, the previous owner of Pornhub rolled up the industry buying most of the most popular porn sites and brands and pay sites and tube sites. Pornhub was the flagship site. So it had Pornhub in its sister site. So it would be YouPorn, TubeAid, GayTube, Extreme Tomb, on and on.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And these moderators were not just moderating the millions of videos on Pornhub. They were in charge of all... the porn tube site.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Exactly. They were reprimanded if they were watching less than 700 per eight hour shift videos, videos, just skipping through them. They were incentivized to be just, they put it this way. Our job was to allow as much content to go through as possible because the free user generated business model porn relies on massive amounts of content to
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
to be picked up in the Google search results, to drive massive amounts of traffic to the site to sell those 4.6 billion ad impressions. They were incentivized to just get as much through. Some of them were watching the more experienced ones, were watching even up to 2,000 videos per eight-hour shift just clicking through.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It was. It really was. And one of the moderators, and he gave me permission to share this, was especially hard for him because he was sexually abused as a child himself. And so it was especially traumatizing for him. And I think that was one of the reasons why, you know, when he heard the stories about what was happening on Pornhub, he wanted to come forward. and reveal what he knew.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. It was ridiculous because when I discovered all this, I started the hashtag trafficking hub. Just to reiterate what we just said about trafficking, the reason why I did that was because any underage victim and anyone forced fraud or coercion on the site is a victim of trafficking per our statutes because these are heavily monetized videos.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So they're using the trafficking statutes now to sue. They can be held criminally responsible for all of that. Some people might say, well, how is that trafficking? It's because it was monetized. Yes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Thank you. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I agree with you a thousand percent. And one of the senior employees said Google is where Pornhub lives or dies. Of course.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Exactly. And Google has the power to suppress. So they are just not – innocent bystanders and all this because Nick Kristof, when he did his article, Children of Pornhub, yeah, he's the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist from the New York Times that took this. He heard about this. Just to give people a recap of what happened. So the Trafficking Hub campaign went viral.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I started a petition. I wrote an op-ed about this, an essay. got a lot of traction. The petition went viral, 2.3 million signatures today from every country in the world. Lots of media articles were written about this. And then Nick Kristof did this huge investigation. One of the things that he pointed out was Google's power over all of this. And I look at this and I see there are enablers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. I mean, it wasn't something that 10 years ago I thought in 2025, this is what I'm going to be doing. But at the same time, I had been preparing for it my whole life. So in the context of over 15 years in the fight against sex trafficking, I was paying attention to the headlines and I was noticing that there was a trend that it wasn't just happening offline. It was being filmed.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
There is the bad actors and then there are enablers who allow them to do this, who help them who in fact benefit from their business and doing so knowingly. So that would include the credit card companies, the financial institutions, and Google. And so I think Google, they don't let you surface results for how do you kill yourself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They took that ability away from people to search that and find a result that would teach them that. This is what he wrote in his article. I haven't actually tried it for myself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
But he said, likewise, they could suppress user-generated porn sites known to be infested in trafficking and not allow that traffic to go. And I have dozens of examples of Google search results that are confirmed. If that link was clicked on Google, it would go to a confirmed case of child abuse on Pornhub. And I've shown those to Google.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Is exactly right. And right now, Pornhub and MindGeek, they're losing their motions to dismiss based on Section 230 because they helped curate. They helped tag, title, surface. They created thumbnails.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, and then knowingly benefiting. So in the US, not only is it illegal to engage directly in trafficking, but knowingly benefiting from a trafficking venture where you knew or you should have known that this was happening, you can be held liable for that. So I think there should be a lawsuit against Google.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Let's work on that next. Yeah, you're working on that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The uploaders? Yeah. So that was that 20%. So the 20% of content on Pornhub where it was the pay to download content, they would identify themselves. They have to. So Rocky Shea Franklin was one of those uploaders. Now, the problem was they were identifying the uploader. They weren't identifying the individuals in the videos.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So we have numerous cases of victims who are currently suing Pornhub who were part of those pay-to-download. They called it the Model Hub program where they were, quote, unquote, Pornhub models.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It was being monetized online. And so there was this intersection between what I call the big porn industry, and we can talk about that, and child sexual abuse and trafficking. And at the end of 2019, I started to notice some really concerning headlines. One story that I kind of credit to the launch of the trafficking hub movement was a story that
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
that had these verified accounts where they would show an ID, they would show where to get paid, but they wouldn't be verifying the individuals in the videos. Yeah, but 80% of the content on Pornhub or more was just the free content. It was anonymous.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Okay, they upload free stuff the same reason why they upload it to Facebook. Clout? It's clicks, it's views, shares, comments.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Because they're not going to prison because they could use a VPN to upload and use an anonymous email address.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So nobody could ever know.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
There was no risk whatsoever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The scary thing is that because of the scale of these sites and because they're not the dark web, right? These are the mainstream sites and these are people... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. those videos on their devices all over the world and re-upload them again and again. A rape that might be uploaded. So yes, that initial upload happened from that perpetrator. But then...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Millions of people a day would have the opportunity to then download it and then they are the re-uploader. So they then redistribute it again and again.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I asked that question exactly right. They want it because to them, it didn't really matter what was in the video as long as it was inventory.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Just as long as it has different tags, as long as it has a different title, it's more content. And so it was incentivizing people. They wanted people to do compilations. They wanted people to download and re-upload.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Exactly. That is exactly why they had a download button. But at the same time, understanding that they had a site that was infested with videos of real sexual crime.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I think that they had an arrogance. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
No, they had a I mean, they have a chief legal officer who was there from 10 years ago who's still there today.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
There was an arrogance to all that was going on. I think that they thought they were just too popular, maybe too big. That's a question that I sometimes wonder. What were you thinking? You would never get caught?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
This was the plan. It was how can we make as much money as we can as fast as we can. This was the business model that they set up to the point where in the discovery process with the litigation now, we've even discovered more than what's in my book. So we recently found out things like the executives had emails and documents that they were sharing with each other.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
about a 15-year-old girl from Broward County, Florida, and she had been missing for an entire year, and she was finally found when her distraught mother was tipped off by a Pornhub user that he recognized her daughter on the site. Oh, gosh.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So it would be recommended we need to suppress on our red words list words like childhood, minor, And they wouldn't. And that they were tracking to the dollar how much money they were making every month on categories and titles that contained child sexual abuse material, like the teen categories, because those were some of the most popular categories on the site.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They knew.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They knew to the dollar. They were tracking how much money they were getting on these various categories. Now, obviously, all of the videos in those categories would not be illegal, right? In a teen or a very young or young age. old, young, small tits, things like this, it's not all going to be illegal.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
A lot of it is 18-year-olds who look underage, but a lot of it was actual teens that were in these videos and tweens.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, I think that I have just been so immersed in all of this that it just doesn't really, I don't want to say it's like that I'm detached or that it's like a critical thing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And she was found in 58 videos being raped on Pornhub, and police actually were able to locate her, and they recognized the guy's face from the assaults in the video, and she was rescued from his apartment. She had been impregnated. It was like this horror story.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
But see, this is the thing is that maybe at first it was uncomfortable for me to talk about it, but I forced myself because the thing is that I think people have to hear it. I don't want to talk in vague terms too much. And I was really trying to balance because I undershared. You may feel like this is so graphic and descriptive.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, I just got a Ukrainian translation book. offer. So we'll see how that goes. But I thought that it was important not to be vague, to be specific, because I think that a lot of people want to just disregard this as you're just oversensitive about this is really consensual content. You just don't understand. You don't know consensual.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, I would just say that, you know, one instance like the 15-year-old girl from Florida who's missing for a year and found in 58 videos on the site, that would be too much. But we know that the site was actually infested with videos of real sexual crime. That would be the spectrum of abuse. And this is not exaggerated.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Like most of the content on the site was legal and consensual, but too much of it was illegal. And that they were profiting from all of it and it was knowing. And so I guess that's just whataboutism too, because a lot of people say, what about this site? And what about that site? And say, okay, well, let's hold them accountable too. I'm focusing on this one predator.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
We don't do that with individuals. Like when we see Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, we don't say, we're not going to hold Jeffrey Epstein accountable because Harvey Weinstein was doing it too. Or Bill Cosby was also raping
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It's like we hold them all accountable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
That's the way the law works. That's the way it is in this case.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I get that all the time. So you're making this up. Well, that was their kind of ammunition to try to quiet this, to try to de-platform or discredit. Of course, the most obvious. This is a religious moral crusade, right wing to shut down all sex on the internet. And at the same time, you have porn performers who are some of my greatest allies in the fight.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
No, she had been missing. So I think she might have ran away. Nobody could find her for a year. And this is how she was found, that her mom was notified that her daughter was on Pornhub. And she was actually in videos that were being paid to download. So it was a profit-sharing relationship with Pornhub, and they were splitting the profit from the sale of her rape videos.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And sometimes they had to be quiet about it because of the MindGeek monopoly. And they would get blacklisted if they would speak publicly because although they hated Pornhub because the free porn tube sites- To your point, what you just said was they destroyed the legal studio produced porn industry by allowing obviously they allowed the rape and the child abuse and all that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
But they were just allowing pirated copyrighted content all the time. So we had porn performers who were complaining, just saying, shut this down, because I'm spending two hours a day scouring my geek's porn tube sites trying to get my own stolen content off the site. So they hated it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So that was really concerning. I had read that story a few days after my second child was born.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It is true. And there is this distinct difference between the porn valley. It almost feels historical now because everything has migrated to mostly the free user generated porn sites. But it still exists like the studio produced content where they have to abide by. This is really important. USC 2257. This is a law that we've had since 1988 in the United States that
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
that requires age and consent verification. It came about when there was an underage victim, Tracy Lords, who was underage and she was being used in these porn videos.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, like you would have heard her name. Any thinking person understands that if you don't verify for age and consent, In porn, you're going to have illegal content proliferating in the industry. And this has been something that they accept in the studio produced professional porn industry. And they abide by that for the most part. And if you don't abide by that, it's a criminal offense.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The DOJ has a right to inspect those records at any time. And if you don't have them, you can go to prison.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So they take it seriously. However, the problem is it just didn't translate into the internet age. And that is one of the things that we're fighting hard for is to create those standards, those standards where you have an intro and an outro in a lot of those videos where you say, hi, my name is da-da-da. I'm here. I consent to this. They do a post-shoot interview as well.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They can have those standards. Now, you're not going to get as much traffic. You're not going to get as much content uploaded, but that's the price to pay to have a legal operating industry.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. I cared about this for so many years. But then when I have my own children, emotionally, it hits you in a different way to a deeper place.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yes, the devil's in the details of all of this. Exactly the fact that, yeah, so they would have, this is f***ing rape, would be the comment. And they would censor rape. And this would happen, and it was confirmed by the moderators. It's exactly what they were doing. I saw this enough times and said, what is going on here? Yeah, they are censoring those words.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And when they got in trouble for the stuff like the unconscious, the drugged, so then they started to take out the word drugged from a title, but leave the video up. And so you could see the title, it would be like, you could tell that it would have said that, but just that one word would be taken out. The video is still there, or they would swap it out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Things like that, instead of actually acknowledging the inherent, deeply flawed business model that they set up, they had to do stuff like this. And it even goes down to things that we discovered, like the fact that they intentionally hired one person out of 1800 employees, one person to work five days a week
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
to review videos flagged by users as terms of service violations, including rape and trafficking. And what they did was they had a policy, and their emails actually uncovered in Discovery where the CEO is discussing with his VPs these policies and talking about them, and he calls it good and reasonable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They had a policy where a video had to be flagged 15 times in order for it to be put in queue for review. So a victim could have their video on Pornhub and then flag it 14 times. They could even flag it 15 times because it had to be over 15 times. And they had a backlog of 706,000 videos.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
You just can't. It's just this whole other level of emotional connection, empathy, and all of you can imagine yourself in the position of that mother. All of that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And we have evidence now of specific cases of prepubescent children who had videos on the site for years with 13 flags, 14 flags. And here you have the CEOs and the VPs discussing this policy, saying it was fine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I mean, this is publicly available information that is in court documents. Of course. And we can see that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I appreciate you saying that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I kind of labored over it. I'm sure you did.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They did want me to tone it down. And I did. I did. But also I just said, look, at the same time, it has to bring true. I didn't want to traumatize people. So I'm so glad that you said that. I did want people to experience it the way that I experienced it. They could feel how I felt.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It's a very complicated ownership structure that we still don't fully understand even today. But they were based in Luxembourg for tax purposes. They had offices or moderation offices in Cyprus. They had offices in Romania, in London, British Virgin Islands. They had their headquarters in Canada. So that's where they had most of their employees and they were operating.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So that was their headquarters. They had offices in L.A. Today they have offices in Texas as well. They were all over the world. And so in that way, they did that on purpose in a way to avoid responsibility in any one place.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I would say, so on Pornhub, we have a percentage of them that we know 20% of the content was from people who considered themselves in the kind of professional model category, although we know that there was criminals infested in there as well. And 80% of that site was user-generated, not verifying agent consent.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They were hiding. And not only hiding money, they were hiding themselves. They were hiding their own identities from the public for years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They had, I mean, it was like 200 sister companies, related sides, PO boxes, bank accounts, companies that would appear and then disappear and appear and disappear and interrelated and. It's just very complicated. That was probably the part of all of this that I understood the least. That was the most difficult for me to wrap my head around.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Forensic accountants and lawyers. And they did that. And the lawyers that are suing Pornhub today, they took two years of jurisdictional discovery. They went in and they've tried to understand all this. And in doing that, they actually were able to now rope in the hedge funds to the lawsuits.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The victims are suing, and they're not only suing Pornhub and its individual owners, they're suing the hedge funds, they're suing Visa, and trying to hold everybody accountable for all of this. Good. Oh, Visa?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
No, it was for even the ads. For buying the ads, for selling the premium memberships, for the pay to download content, all of that was being monetized by the credit card companies. And PayPal, PayPal actually disengaged with them. When that London Sunday Times story came out, I told you about, PayPal was like, we're out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Well, they said they were. They said they were so concerned and we were against this kind of content. But it was a lot of talk. It was really hard.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, they were charging a lot, you know, because these are high risk transactions. So they get to charge more per transaction on porn transactions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I've heard certain cards or different financial transactions are even more than that. So significantly more. And what was interesting about all this, you know, at first we said, okay, looking at this, how do we move them? How do we go after this? And yes, of course it was like public shaming, but one of the things that was early on we understood was it was the credit card companies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So I would say on these sites, the possibility that this could be illegal, if there's a site that's not verifying agent consent, is probably over 80%. Not to say that that is the percentage. The possibility is that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And we knew this because there was a site called Backpage.com a number of years ago. It was kind of like Craigslist where they were selling kids. And one of the things that was really effective was going after the credit card company. So we had that. But then the former owner of Pornhub came forward and
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Fabian Tillman, the guy that had that $362 million loan to roll up the porn industry, and he's the one who put Pornhub on the map. And he had sold the company, I think, six or seven years before all this started. And he came forward to me in the summer of 2020 to say he wanted to help. And one of the things that he said was, go after the credit card companies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The only thing they care about is the credit card companies. That was a confirmation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. Especially if that's their motivating factor. That's all they care about. That's the reason why we saw the payoffs that we did later on in the book with them taking down content.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So I learned a lot about Firas through dozens of hours of conversations with company insiders from the company experiencing him as an employee, but also people who were close to the family. But I learned a lot about his personality, and it was interesting. I tried to be as detailed and honest as I could about him to describe his character, who he was.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
He was actually very dedicated to his family at the same time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Willing to completely exploit other children and other people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. I hope that people really do get to know as much as you can because they did hide themselves.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So one of the things I really wanted to do as much as humanly possible was let the world know who are these people, what are they like, and truly expose them because at the same time that they were exposing for profit the bodies of unwilling victims since 2007 and profiting from that, they were hiding themselves. So they were using fake names like VP of Pornhub.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Now, we actually have some concrete numbers to show that at one point, Pornhub was admitting in the height of all of this happening, they said 1%, they did like an audit of themselves and they said, we think that 1% of our content is child sexual abuse material. And that would be confirmed, known, hashed, previously uploaded child sexual abuse material.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Corey Ehrman was using pseudonyms all the time in hundreds of media articles. And the former majority shareholder of the company was completely unknown to the world. And he had hidden his identity for so many years. And actually, Fabian, the former owner, is the one who told me his name for the first time. And we were able to expose him, burned Bergmayer.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And he was the majority shareholder, living part-time in Hong Kong and London and He was from Austria. But these men tried to hide themselves. So one of the things was, let's actually show the world who they are and hold them accountable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, exactly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, definitely. That has been part of the whole process. Yeah, I've experienced a lot. Death threats, rape threats, family, doxing, hacking, being falsely reported for possession of child pornography, which never happened. Of course.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, that's happened. And yeah, there's been kind of a lot of stress on my family through all of this as well. But it doesn't even compare to some of the stuff that the victims themselves have been attacked and had happened to them. And what they've had to go through in identifying themselves and speaking out has been so much worse.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, it was at the same time within days of each other in different parts of the world. There were separate victims who had come forward publicly. A lot of the victims were coming forward anonymously and being connected to attorneys. I mean, at the time I had victims coming forward anonymously.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
As the petition was going viral and all the news stories and everything, almost on a daily basis, victims were coming forward. But some of them said, I'm going to put my name out there. I'm going to speak publicly about this. And it was three of them. And they were in different parts of the world. Within days of each other, each one of them was physically attacked. And they were just roughed up.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It was an intimidation thing. One of them sent pictures of notes that she was getting on her windshield after work that were talking about her sexual abuse and things like that. And it was frightening.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. And that's the thing is that you think that how could this happen? How could this be a coincidence? But at the same time, you can't prove that it wasn't a coincidence. So you feel like in the sense I felt like I was going crazy. What is happening here is how could this be real? But it was like this was actually happening.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
That means that it was one in 100 videos, child sexual abuse.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. I, you know, reflecting back on that, there are some stories people say, like, why did you do this and how did you stick with it? And some of that I think back on my history. And sometimes I think certain personality traits are just genetic, like just in you. Yeah, I've had experiences over the years where a crooked plumber takes advantage of my husband.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So he's a builder and he takes all the money for a job he never does. Find out that he had actually done that to many other people looking on the Internet. They're complaining about the same guy texting him saying, hey, listen, you give that money back or you're going to regret it. He didn't listen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Themselves.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And I ended up connecting with the victims throughout the county who all shared the same story, connected with the police, actually connected with an ex-girlfriend of his I found on social media.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And she told me a lot of interesting details and found out that he was going to try to take off to Hawaii with all this money that he'd taken from all these victims and actually found out the airline, the flight. And I told the police and he was arrested and he was sentenced. And now he's paid everybody back with interest.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Amazing. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Think about that. People are browsing a lot of videos per session on those sites.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It started with somebody that I care deeply for. And then this was so wrong. I just had to go after it. And then a used car salesman has sold my sister a lemon of a junkyard engine and failing transmission. And She drove it off the lot. The check engine light goes on. She begs him to take it back. He won't. I go over there. Listen, this is wrong. You sold her a lemon. Give it back. He wouldn't.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I just stood out there protesting. I got a permit, stood outside of his little car dealership for days in the rain, protesting, telling every single person that they sold a lemon and he lost all his business. And anyway, he finally did it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The news didn't cover it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
There was no news. It was just me with a sign saying, turn around. He sold us a lemon failing engine. And day after day, he came out gun threats, yelling his partner quit. I just said, I'm not leaving until you give it back. And I was serious. And then he finally did.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Hit him where it hurts, right? Like he was losing his revenue. Nobody would buy a car from him.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
We know the stats of child sexual abuse material online, but specific to the adult sites, we don't really have those numbers. NCMEC has had over 100 million reports of child sexual abuse in one year.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Well, good for you. I mean, you have the heart for justice. Yeah. Being an attorney also in your past and knowing that they're doing that to other people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It was like intimidation tactics. It's so dumb, though. It's so juvenile. Right? Yeah. I currently have a situation right now, and it's not as nefarious as this, but just an AI thing saying that I'm a porn star using an interview and describing this particular scene that I was in and whatnot. But yeah, all of these things that were happening, they were intimidation, harassment.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Some of them I can tie directly back to the company. Some of them are just people who are financially incentivized, who support the company, who don't want to see revenue disturbed or angry that this is happening.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, random people. doing this kind of thing. Yeah. But that was certainly happening. But I always had this feeling of this may be uncomfortable. This may be painful. But when you're going through, it's like when there's purpose to it, it's so much easier to go through. And when you're seeing progress, fine, go for it. We're making progress.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
That was hard. We argued and I brought the evidence to the VPs of Visa and MasterCard. It wasn't until Nick Kristof released his groundbreaking article called The Children of Pornhub. He ends that article with these words. Pornhub is Jeffrey Epstein times a thousand. And he specifically called out the credit card companies in his article.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Why are you still doing business with a company that distributes rape videos to the world? And at that point, there were thousands of follow on articles to that. And the pressure was on. There was journalists calling Visa and asked, why are you still doing it? Bill Ackman, who is a billionaire hedge fund manager, and he read The Children of Pornhub. He was incensed. He has daughters of his own.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And he reached out and I got connected with him and he learned the story. And not only did he just go on Twitter to express his dismay and call out Visa MasterCard, he knew the CEO of MasterCard from the tennis circuit. And he made a phone call. He sent some texts. He said, this is trafficking going on. Are you going to do the right thing?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And Ajay Banga, who was the CEO of MasterCard at the time, said, I'm on it. And he was on it. And he actually, at that point, cut off the credit card companies and then Visa followed, Discover followed. However, this was the time when they then, in a panic, because this was the worst thing that could happen to Pornhub, they took down 80% of the entire website overnight. It was gone.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. So the London Sunday Times, which is a very credible investigative newspaper in London, they had done an investigation at that time and they had found dozens of illegal videos on Pornhub within minutes, even children as young as three.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Over 10 million videos, over 30 million images disappeared. in what Financial Times called probably the biggest takedown of content in internet history. And that was 24 hours, all their unverified content was gone because they wanted to try to woo back the credit card companies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Right, although they actually didn't. But however, so this all happened and made huge headlines, but I found out that two weeks later, The credit card companies quietly snuck back to the advertising arm of Pornhub. So it was kind of behind the scenes because people don't see those transactions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Owned by Pornhub, owned by MindGeek. And then it was round two. It was two more years of fighting. And it was only until Bill Ackman got involved again. We went on SquawkBox, calling out CEO Al Kelly of Visa. After Visa was not let out of their motion to dismiss in the case where Serena, Serena was a young teen. She was exploited on the site. Her videos were uploaded again and again.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Millions of views. She would beg for the videos to come down. She'd be hassled. They would say, prove that you're underage in the video. Prove that you're a victim. She didn't have to prove that when it was being uploaded. And it sent her on a spiral of despair. She dropped out of school. She was a straight-A student before all this happened. Never kissed a boy before.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
She dropped out of school from bullying. She got addicted to drugs to try to numb the pain. She tried to kill herself multiple times.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
She wound up homeless living out of a car. But she sued Pornhub. And not only did she sue Pornhub, she sued its individual owners, the hedge funds, and Visa. And Visa lost their motion to dismiss her case. And that is when everything...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It's still ongoing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
But they lost the motion. And that was when the pressure was on. So then we publicly were calling out Al Kelly. Her lawyer was on Squawk Box as well. And finally, he made a personal statement. And he said, I'm a father. And we're finally, you know, cutting off Pornhub once and for all.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
gross and creepy it was shocking to read that and they were calling out particular advertisers in this investigation London Sunday Times they called them out for that immediately they were shamed they apologized they pulled the ads But it was a big deal, at least in the anti-trafficking space. We were paying attention to what was happening.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
But then it happened and that got demonetized by the credit card companies, lost all mainstream advertisers. All of that happened.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And there was a woman named Nicole Adamando from New York. She had been abused by her partner. He had filmed the abuse and he was uploading the videos to Pornhub and she killed him. Oh, my God. She ended up getting sentenced to life in prison. At the time, she had a legal team and they were able to reduce her sentence to seven years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. Today they have bank wires that they can pay in crypto is the way that they are monetizing the sites. But enablers is the key word. There are the bad actors and then there are the enablers, those who allow them to continue
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And so as much as it's important to hold what I call corporate traffickers, mega pimps accountable for the exploitation, criminal exploitation happening, you also have to hold accountable their enablers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Judge Cormac Carney in California in a case that is suing Visa and Pornhub for monetizing child sexual abuse, what he said, Visa gave Pornhub the very tool through which to complete the crime of knowingly benefiting from child trafficking. I think he said it very well.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yes, exactly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
He called him like, what it was is co-conspiracy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
That's the key to this is holding the bad actors and their enablers. And the enablers have the power to stop this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
That's the price to pay. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. And they had hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views and had been on the site for years. Yeah. These videos. One of the things that happens is this dark kind of spiral where I hear this a lot from people who come forward and say, hey, I was addicted to this since I was eight years old and 10 and 11.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It was a very dramatic case. And the pictures of her, she had two young children and her being taken off to prison. It was just a horrific story. And then there was about 100 victims in California and San Diego that were part of this trafficking operation called Girls Do Porn. It was run by a guy named Michael Pratt. who ended up on the FBI's 10 most wanted list. I saw that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
But obviously there's the psychopaths and the people who are just instantly drawn to that kind of content. But sometimes people go down a road, they don't even realize they're going down.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So with porn, the dopamine hit, you don't necessarily need more porn, but you need different porn to get that same hit. And so what happens is you go more extreme and more extreme. Some people don't, but then it can lead to where you're watching things that you never would have imagined that you would have started with in the beginning.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, they do. So that's how I ended up seeing so much of this illegal content because people all over the world, when they would come in contact with an illegal video on Pornhub, they would search around the internet and then they would send it to me. So I would get the link. And if I clicked on the link, then the algorithm springs into action. So if you see one
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
horrific rape video of an unconscious woman, then it thinks, okay, I'm going to push more of that. Then you get more and more. And so you go down that, I call it the hell hole of rape on Pornhub.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, that has definitely happened to me. But to the point of ads, one of the things that was horrific to me to realize but not surprising was I actually got to investigate Traffic Junkie, which was their ad arm. And the way that they would target advertisements, so they would sell ads. First of all, they gather so much data about people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So people think they're going to a free tube site anonymously if you don't use a VPN IP address and income and all this stuff. But anyway, they would sell ads to advertisers targeting specific content. So they would suggest things like you could find rape in Chinese or not 18 or very young teen or screaming teen, all of these different things. And then they could advertise on a particular video.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
to people who they understood would be interested in their product. So on a child sexual abuse video, I would see an ad that would say, delete your history after clicking here. And it was targeted to pedophiles so that they, oh, okay, let me click on that ad.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Exactly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The scary thing, too, is that kids have free access to this site.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The worst things I would never wish on my worst enemy to see that I have personally been traumatized by witnessing on Pornhub, any child— You have 10-year-olds now seeing that. Somebody messaged me two days ago that said, I got addicted to the free porn tube sites when I was six. And it took me on a dark path. And knowing that they're not only seeing—
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
the hardcore content and the porn content, but actually they could be witnessing real sexual crime as their sex education, creating their sexual template, creating their sexual desires and what they understand about sex from such a young age.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So he was found two Christmas Eves ago in Spain. He had become a fugitive because he was wanted.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So Pornhub was criminally charged by the U.S. government for knowingly profiting from the trafficking of over 100 women in a particular sex trafficking operation in San Diego. And instead of full prosecution, they were offered a deferred prosecution agreement.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They were told to pay $1.8 million, which is nothing to a company like this, and have a government monitor over their site for three years. And I think the way that they're failing in a situation like that is a slap on the wrist or nothing at all.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Or we don't see them putting the resources, the time, and the attention necessary to actually create a big enough risk for these kinds of abusers to face serious consequences.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It becomes exactly. All right, whatever. That is the cost of doing business. And that is not serious enough for them to actually stop engaging in that kind of conduct.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And that's why I'm really hopeful with regard to the civil litigation side of things, because it doesn't rely on anybody with the will of the victims and their amazing attorneys. And today, since 2020, we've had almost 300 victims sue in 25 lawsuits, including class actions on behalf of tens of thousands of child victims. And they're doing well. Those class actions are certified.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, he was finally found, and all his co-conspirators are in prison already, and now he's in the process of finally being held accountable. But he was running a partner channel on Pornhub that was one of their most popular partner channels on the site.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They lost their motions for summary judgment. They're going to trial like they are doing well. And so I see I actually have more hope in the civil justice system to hit these companies where it hurts than even the criminal justice system does. to actually hold them accountable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, it is. The wheels of justice turn slowly. That is absolutely true.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yes, but they turn.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. That was pretty incredible what happened. So they deleted all of that content, but immediately they started getting phone calls. They were getting dropped on a personal level from their insurances for their many rental properties that they had luxury rental properties all over Quebec. And suddenly their lenders are dropping them, their insurances.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Suddenly they couldn't drive their Lamborghinis and their Maseratis and all the kind of luxury cars they had because they were being dropped from their car insurances. They were blacklisted in Canada as a moral risk.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I didn't know that that was even possible.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. But in their case, I was glad that they were getting payback for us. It was just sick. He's a CEO and minority shareholder because they had been exposed and they were getting held accountable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
This is your fault. I mean, that was happening. They were losing mainstream business partners. All the mainstream advertisers were canceling. And the CEO and the COO were finally forced to resign. And the company was sold as a distressed asset.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
One of the things that was just reward in that moment of the big takedown that happened was the fact that I was getting calls from so many victims who were just crying out. With joy and relief that for the first time in years, their rape videos were finally off of Pornhub.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And it was like they could finally breathe because they had been fighting for so long for these to come down and finally they were gone. And that was probably the most meaningful thing in all of this when that happened. But at the same time, we're still fighting. We still feel like justice hasn't been fully served, but we're glad for the things that have happened.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So the victim sued him, the FBI, the criminal accountability for girls do porn. But the way that they had distributed their content and made it very popular was through Pornhub. So they had one of the most popular partner channels. I think it was over 600 million views and 800,000 subscribers online. And they're each paying like five bucks a month or whatever?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
There's been some good like compilations, everything that they say, the way they answer. And it's very rewarding to finally see them being grilled and failing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
13 years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Hiding all of the child sexual abuse. So in that parliamentary hearing, the heads of the leading child protection agencies in the U.S. and Canada, that they would have to report those videos, child sexual abuse to them. It was mandatory reporting in Canada. And they testified that they had not gotten a single report of child sexual abuse for 13 years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And the serious consequences that is, is I think. Yeah. Oh, man, that's disturbing to think about.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, they were just jumping ship. Hundreds of employees.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They will take it off LinkedIn. They don't want to have my geek on there at all.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
After the New York Times piece, so many employees were jumping ship, just quitting. Entire departments were gone. Like the HR department was gone. My God.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
We don't know who did it. Unfortunately, they were trying to kind of turn the fingers at me and the trafficking movement for motivating X, Y, and Z. But clearly, it was a professional job. It was done by somebody who knew exactly what they were doing. They raised that entire multi tens of millions of dollars of a mansion to the ground without even touching the neighbors. And it was in hours.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It was a huge fire. It was insane. That happened. Thankfully, they actually weren't in the house because they were building the house. They were at the last stage of construction. So as much as I hate anybody and want to see people face justice, I don't want to see them. Yeah. But that did happen. And we don't know even to this day. Was it somebody with an industry?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Was it an angry majority shareholder who was angry? They lived in this place called Mafia Row in Montreal.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And there's hints that it could have been their neighbors because their neighbors were so mad that they had reporters knocking on the doors of the neighbors' houses, the cameras in the neighborhood all of the time. And then they found out that he had done all of this. They had been hurting children.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And before that, they already hated him because he had cleared, like, hundreds of trees to build his monstrosity of a mansion without a permit and all of this. And they were angry at him anyway. So...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Well, so you subscribe to the channel and then they give you clips and they advertise and then they drive you to pay for more content.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The neighbors. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, yes. That definitely happened. And I wrote a chapter called Before You Break. And it was because so much was piling on at once. And my uncle, who I consider my brother, was dying of cancer. And I was seeing him through the stages of death. At the same time, all of this was so intense. And I was so conflicted, too, because I have two young kids and I'm spending so much time on this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And it was just hard. And there were times that I just, I don't want to do this anymore. But I felt like it is an honor and a privilege of a lifetime to have the opportunity to be able to lead something like this. And sorry, I'm getting emotional about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, I... I just couldn't. As much as I really wanted to, I really didn't want to because I wanted to see this through to the end and I wanted to see justice fully served and I still do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yes. And they were splitting again. This is a profit sharing relationship with Pornhub and they were splitting the profits. And Pornhub was aware because victims were reaching out and begging them to take these videos down because it was destroying their life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
My dad taught me a lesson. He was a man of integrity. And growing up, if he said something, he meant it. You knew that he was going to, at least as much as he possibly could, try to do what he said he was going to do. And I feel that way. It wasn't a light thing when we started this to say the petition is called Shut Down Pornhub and Hold Its Executives Accountable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So since the book was written, more has come down. And we found out that they have gone from 56 million pieces of content to 5.2 million today.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yes. And so they're 91 percent. And the rest of the content that's on there, most of that was only verified uploaders. And we know the problem with that. The individuals in the videos were not verified.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. So they need to take down the rest of that content. It's not important just to see justice served to get vengeance for victims. And that's important. That's important for their healing. Because they can say, yes, the wrong was recognized, right, and paid for what happened. And that's an important journey on their healing process.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
However, it's also important to be a deterrent to future abusers. Because this is a risk-benefit calculation. And until we make the risk greater than the benefits that these companies get by maintaining the status quo, they will continue.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And so we have to make an example out of Pornhub to say, and we're seeing this already, like the other Porn 2 types are already trying to clean themselves up, to get rid of illegal content, to change their upload. They don't want to end up like Pornhub.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Exactly. And that's why when we're fighting trafficking, we have to increase risk and we have to eliminate profitability. But we also want to see policy put in place to make sure this doesn't happen again. So really the solution at scale for this is, is to mandatory third-party age and consent verification for every single person in every video.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, I would never want anybody to give their ID to Pornhub. Not a million years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They're facing a class action right now for data exploitation as well. Yes. User data exploitation. So they were without consent, gathering user data and help monetizing it and whatnot with advertisers and Google and all of that. So they're facing that. So I would never want that. But there are reliable, privacy respecting third party companies that can agent consent verify.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, they were trafficked. And so there's no question. And that's part of the definition, of course, of trafficking is force, fraud, coercion. If you're under the age of 18 and you're using a commercial sex act. So if you're making money on that sex act that was induced by force or fraud or coercion, or if anybody's under the age of 18, you don't even need to prove any of that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And that has to be done and it has to be done at scale. And so what I think is really key here is, yes, governments have to do this. But the credit card companies have to do this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Because when Visa says, we do not do business with user-generated porn sites that don't verify agent consent, immediately, quickly, internationally, all of these porn companies that are highly motivated by profit will quickly fall in line.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They will immediately figure it out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
the financial transactions, they will comply.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And that's why they want to resist it, right? Because they don't want to pay. Right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They don't want to pay, but that's why these things have to come by force. They have to come through continued public pressure coupled with strategic civil litigation that puts enough pressure on the right pressure points, financial and the public perception, to force those changes to get Visa to do this, MasterCard, governments.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And then I think we're going to have a safer internet for our kids for generations to come.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Well, thanks to all the people. I have to pass that on. Yeah. I had the honor of a lifetime leading this movement, but I'm an activist and I was able to help activate people. And it was this amazing team from journalists and lawyers and law enforcement, victims, most importantly, who came together.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. Some victims like 100 percent. They feel justified. They feel like that. Yeah. Then there's others. And maybe it's that DNA thing. Maybe it's like it's in them. They have this fire like they want to sound the alarm. And they're really motivated, too, by I don't want anyone else to have to go through what I went through.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It is shocking to me that after five years of this viral campaign, of all the thousands of media articles that have been written, the lawsuits, everything that's happened, most of the time, most people say, I had no idea that it's happening. That's a problem. And I think it's just because we just haven't reached saturation point where we've talked about it enough for it to be common knowledge.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And so that's why I'm so grateful for conversations like this. And I think it's because people are uncomfortable. They're afraid to talk about it. It's one of those things that it's affecting everybody in some way. We're all in contact with this free user generated porn industry, but nobody wants to talk about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
That is a thing. It's even with the release of the book and there's whatever shows you can go on as an author when you release a book. And a lot of them that reach a huge audience are like, it's too heavy. It's too dark. Good morning America might be like. And so people want to a lot of times kind of shy away from these uncomfortable and dark topics.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It's just automatically trafficking. So anyway, they were held accountable. But this was in the news at the time as well. And so all of this began to raise the question, how in the world was this happening on Pornhub? Because at the time, Pornhub was a cultural icon. It was all over the place.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I appreciate the fact that this obviously is not the first time you've been covering this issue of sex trafficking. I know I've heard other episodes that you've had on this, and you definitely don't shy away from the hard topics.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I would just say you are knowingly benefiting from the exploitation of countless victims and you actually have the power to stop it now because the porn sites are highly motivated by the credit card companies and they absolutely had the power to stop it. And we did say that, but they didn't want to until they were forced to.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Thank you for having me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Exactly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Walking New York Fashion Week. People are wearing their apparel. Jokes on Saturday Night Live, like faux commercials on Saturday Night Live. All of that. Mainstream brand. Not to mention that at the time, so by the end of 2020, they had capitalized on coronavirus. And they had actually become the fifth most visited website across the entire internet.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They made traffic soar. They had also done some crazy PR stunts. Like they offered Pornhub Premium for free to the entire world. So that instead of paying $9.99 for ad-free Pornhub, so you could watch porn or you could watch real rape or child abuse ad-free on Pornhub. They were just giving it for free. So their traffic was better than ever. They were making more money than ever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They had more visits than Netflix and Amazon. They had 170 million visits a day, 62 billion visits a year that year. Jeez. And by the end of 2020, they had 56 million pieces of content on the site. So every year they were having enough content uploaded. It would take 169 years to watch if you put those videos back to back. Oh, my God.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, in the case of Pornhub, we know they knew. We know. We have evidence. We have conversations. We have email exchanges. We have documents. We have policies. We have so much evidence. that this was something they knew about. They hid from authorities because of profit, because they wanted to maximize profit. They allowed to continue for years since 2007.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And so 100% responsibility because they have the ability to stop it. They had the ability in 2007 to to age verify, to make sure that somebody had to show an ID, to show their face, to consent verify before they could upload, and they chose not to.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
There are some where it's obvious, right, that this is nonconsensual, this could be prepubescent, and you could see that, right? Or there's violence or tags, titles indicating young or pain, things like that. However, sometimes these are videos that were consensually recorded and then nonconsensually uploaded. So then in that case, you have no idea, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
People are uncomfortable. They're afraid to talk about it. It's one of those things that it's affecting everybody in some way. We're all in contact with this free user-generated porn industry, but nobody wants to talk about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
whether they consented to having that video on Pornhub. And victims of this kind of, they call it image-based sexual abuse, that's all the way from child abuse to what we used to call revenge porn. And they face serious amounts of trauma as well. The suicide ideation rate for these victims is about 50%. And so the harm is from the revenge porn side all the way to the child sexual.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It's all serious. And when you're on a site that doesn't verify agent consent, not only of the uploader, but every single video and every single person, every single video, you have to be suspect of everything that you're watching.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Just under everybody's noses, millions of people a day. A phrase my dad always used to say, he was just a very wise man, and he always used to say, assumption is the mother of all screw-ups. And thinking about that, the idea that we're all assuming that this is legal, vetted, consensual material, because that was their tagline. That was what they presented to the world.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And they spent millions of dollars on their PR campaigns to save the oceans. And they had this whole arm of Pornhub called Pornhub Cares.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Save the bees and all this stuff. And so I said, well, let me just test the upload system. I put the baby down after he went back to sleep, got the camera out, took the video of the keyboard and the rug and then uploaded and found out what millions of the point of hidden in plain sight.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Millions of people already knew because they were uploading to Pornhub every day that there was no requirement for ID or consent form. Anybody anonymously with a VPN and under 10 minutes using an email address, just a random email address could upload a sex video to Pornhub. And there you go. That's how the site became infested with videos of real sexual crime.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They didn't even necessarily need to know that there was going to be money or not. They could have deceived, defrauded, coerced, and we're talking about adults, because when they're under 18, it just doesn't matter what happened. If they have a video on the site.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Now, the monetization piece, I think, is really important when we're talking about the definition of trafficking, because a lot of people don't realize that what constitutes trafficking is that commercialization. When something of value is exchanged for the coerced sex act or the underage sex.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Now, with regard to the websites, we call it tech-facilitated trafficking because this might be free porn. 80% of the content on Pornhub was free, but it was heavily monetized. So the ones that were benefiting from it are the executives of Pornhub who are selling 4.6 billion ad impressions on Pornhub every single day.