Male actor in GirlsDoPorn videos sentenced on conspiracy charge in long-running San Diego case

The final defendant in the long-running sex trafficking prosecution involving the GirlsDoPorn online empire was sentenced in San Diego federal court Friday to four years in prison.

Douglas Wiederhold, 42, who appeared as the male actor in 71 of the website’s pornographic videos, pleaded guilty in 2024 to a federal conspiracy charge for his involvement with the now-defunct site.

According to his plea agreement, Wiederhold falsely assured at least two women that their videos wouldn’t be posted online after knowing other women’s videos had already been uploaded to the internet.

Prosecutors say that for years, GirlsDoPorn’s owners and operators coerced and tricked hundreds of women into appearing in online pornographic videos under false pretenses by assuring them their videos would be distributed only to private customers on DVDs or other physical platforms, while always intending to post the videos online.

Wiederhold, whose plea agreement states he took part in the conspiracy from 2011 to 2012, was charged nearly four years after the bulk of the defendants in the case, including GirlsDoPorn’s owner, Michael James Pratt.

During Friday’s sentencing hearing, defense attorney Patrick Griffin argued his client had far less involvement in GirlsDoPorn’s criminal activities than any of the other defendants.

Griffin said Wiederhold “went along” with the false representations forwarded by Pratt and failed to contradict Pratt’s lies, but denied...