Porn Actor Ruben Garcia Pleads Guilty To Sex Trafficking, Conspiracy

Adult film performer and producer Ruben Andre Garcia pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to sex trafficking charges.

Garcia admitted that he and the owners of the adult websites GirlsDoPorn.com and GirlsDoToys.com recruited and tricked young women into performing sex acts on camera, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego. He was charged with conspiracy to commit sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion, and sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion.

Garcia confessed to working from 2013 to 2019 as a performer and recruiter for the adult websites, which offered paid subscriptions and had videos of young women who were appearing in their first adult film. The websites were run by co-defendants Michael James Pratt and Matthew Isaac Wolfe.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the websites generated more than $17 million in revenue, with each video garnering millions of views. Garcia was paid a commission for all his recruited victims, apart from an hourly wage.

The court will order Garcia to pay restitution in an amount yet to be decided upon at the time of sentencing.

Garcia, in his plea agreement, confessed that he and his co-conspirators cheated, threatened and lied to their victims by promising that their videos would not be posted online. Further, they told the women that nobody would find out since the videos would not be released in the U.S. However, they later posted them on adult websites.

Garcia also confessed to recruiting young women to act as “references” to lure and convince reluctant victims. These references were paid a fixed fee for all the victims they tried to recruit. Additional fees were made if the victims agreed to shoot a video.

The victims, who were from the U.S. and Canada, were taken to local hotels or short-term rental units upon their arrival in San Diego, which was where the videos were shot.

If any of the young women wanted to back out from a shoot, Garcia, along with his co-conspirators, blackmailed and threatened to sue them, cancel their flights back home or post the already filmed pornographic video online. The victims were told that filming would last only 30 minutes, which was not the case.

“This defendant was a key player in a despicable fraud that has devastated the victims,” U.S. Attorney Robert Brewer said in a statement issued after Garcia’s change of plea.

Garcia will be sentenced on March 5, 2021. The next hearing in the ongoing case is scheduled for Jan. 22.

Meanwhile, the whereabouts of one of Garcia's co-conspirators, Pratt, a 36-year-old New Zealand native, remains unknown after he disappeared last year. In September, the FBI announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.