FinTelegram has always argued that payment processors are liable for their clients’ crimes if they knowingly and wilfully facilitate them. A U.S.judge ruled Friday that Visa helped Pornhub “monetize child porn” a decision that could have long-lasting implications for credit card networks and payment processors. The court denied Visa’s motion to be dismissed from a lawsuit against Pornhub operator MindGeek. The ruling states that there was enough evidence to show Visa knowingly facilitated the crime by providing tools to complete the crime” of distributing child pornography.
The U.S. investor and billionaire Bill Ackman called Visa‘s conduct in this case inexcusable and started a respective Thread on Twitter:
The Lawsuit
In 2014, Plaintiff was thirteen years old when a sexually explicit video featuring Plaintiff titled “13-Year Old Brunette Shows Off For the Camera” was available on Pornhub (Pornhub.com), a pornography website owned and operated by MindGeek. Plaintiff’s then-boyfriend pressured her into making the video and posted it without her knowledge or consent. MindGeek also posted the video to its other pornography websites. The video had garnered 400,000 views by the time Plaintiff discovered it. MindGeek earned revenue from advertisements that appeared alongside the video.
Plaintiff alleges that Visa obtained knowledge of MindGeek’s child porn business from various sources. First, Plaintiff alleges that Visa performed reviews of MindGeek’s sites according to its own “due diligence and compliance functions.” Further, in November 2019, Visa’s competitor PayPal terminated its relationship with MindGeek, issuing a public statement saying that PayPal explicitly prohibits using its services to sell materials that depict criminal behavior. Visa also landed on a list maintained by anti-trafficking advocates for processing payments for “pornography websites, including those hosting content fetishizing minors.
The plaintiff allegedly fell into a deep depression, tried to kill herself, and became a heroin user after her unwanted infamy. Still underage, the lawsuit said that she began acting in other porn videos produced by an older man to support her habit.
Montreal-based MindGeek also owns Brazzers, RedTube, and YouPorn, which allegedly attract 115 million daily visitors and 3 billion daily ad impressions.
The Visa State of Denial
In December 2020, when the New York Times published a report titled “The Children of Pornhub” – wherein the author explained MindGeek’s child porn problem, Visa temporarily suspended business with MindGeek pending ‘investigations’ into the allegations in the New York Times article. In response to the suspension, “MindGeek took down over 10 million unverified videos from its, constituting over 80% of its content” Ultimately, however, Visa restored services for MindGeek’s paid premium sites and for
advertising on all its sites. According to the suit, the illicit clip was still on the company’s sites as recently as 2020.
The Latest Ruling
Reed the ruling Serena Fleites v Mindgeek S.A.R.L, et al here.
In his ruling, US District Court Judge Cormac Carney wrote that there was enough evidence to find that Visa engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the online pornographers.
“Here is Visa, standing at and controlling the valve, insisting that it cannot be blamed for the water spill because someone else is wielding the hose,” Carney wrote. “When MindGeek decides to monetize child porn, and Visa decides to continue to allow its payment network to be used for that goal despite knowledge of MindGeek’s monetization of child porn, it is entirely foreseeable that victims of child porn like Plaintiff will suffer the harms that Plaintiff alleges,” the ruling said.
Payment Processors Are Liable
This U.S. Ruling confirms FinTelegram’s view that payment processors are responsible for their customers’ criminal activities and scams if they know about them or are grossly negligent in failing to take action against their services being used by cybercrime schemes.
