Another person connected to Girls Do Porn was arrested earlier this month in Michigan on federal felony charges and will stand before a federal judge in San Diego Thursday in a court case that is currently sealed, 404 Media has learned.
Douglas “James” Wiederhold, the co-owner of a website called MomPOV.com with Girls Do Porn ringleader and recently captured FBI Most Wanted fugitive Michael Pratt, was arrested on September 1 and booked in Newaygo County Jail in Michigan, according to public documents. He was released from jail on $25,000 bail. Very little information has been made public by the judge in Michigan, but it mentions that he was arrested on an “out-of-district” felony warrant.
His bond document mentions that Wiederhold “must appear in San Diego Federal Court on September 14, 2023,” and the Michigan judge writes, “I am leaving other conditions to be determined by the Judge in San Diego.” Court records note that there is an “other court case” in the Southern District of California. Searching that case number in a federal database lists that case as “Sealed v. Sealed. This case is SEALED.” San Diego is where Girls Do Porn was based and where a federal investigation into the company is ongoing.
Wiederhold was the original male actor in Girls Do Porn videos, before Andre Garcia. MomPOV.com was an affiliate website of Girls Do Porn, and focused on “mature” porn shot from the point of view of the male: Wiederhold.
According to court documents from the 2019 civil trial of 22 victims of Girls Do Porn against the company’s operators, Wiederhold was hired by Pratt to serve as the male performer for Girls Do Porn videos in 2007. Wiederhold founded MomPOV.com with Pratt in 2010, and acted as the male performer in MomPOV videos. He stopped shooting for Girls Do Porn around 2012.
Samantha Cole
He and Pratt started Domi Publications, LLC to run MomPOV in 2015. Wiederhold’s scheme for running MomPOV was very similar to how Girls Do Porn was run. In the judge’s decision to award the Girls Do Porn victims damages, one of the women who testified in the case said that she received an email from "James Chamberlain" that “revealed the job was for an adult video and stated, ‘You won't find a more professional and legit person/company.’” Like Pratt and his co-conspirators, Wiederhold promised her that the video would only be released “in foreign countries, not the United States," and never online, she said in her testimony.
When she discovered the video she shot with Wiederhold was online, she testified, she contacted him “begging him to remove it,” but his response was, "Sorry, there's nothing I can do." She said he then hung up on her.
In January 2020, 22 victims in a civil trial against Girls Do Porn were awarded more than $12.7 million in damages. Lawyers for that trial heard from more than 100 women who experienced almost identical abuse; some reported being trapped in hotel rooms and violently assaulted for many hours. For many, the videos appearing online on mainstream tube sites like Pornhub upended their lives.
Wiederhold wasn’t a defendant in the civil trial, but Domi Productions, as an affiliate of the Girls Do Porn empire, was. Domi Productions filed for bankruptcy in 2020, and because of the ruling, the women were named as creditors in Domi's Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Last year, the bankruptcy trustee for the company sued the attorneys representing Domi in that trial for not settling out of court when the women gave them the chance, Courthouse News reported.
So far, multiple Girls Do Porn conspirators and people connected to the crime ring have pled guilty to federal charges. Garcia pleaded guilty to sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion in 2020 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison; cameraman Teddy Gyi also pleaded guilty in 2021; Valerie Moser, the administrative assistant who helped Girls Do Porn owners coerce women into shooting with Girls Do Porn, also pleaded guilty in 2021; and Matthew Wolfe, Pratt’s close conspirator and lead videographer, pleaded guilty to the same in 2022. In January, another of the cameramen, Brian Alexander Foster, formally pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to engage in stalking. Pratt faces 19 federal counts, including sex trafficking and production of child pornography.
