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In article <ud86f2$24nkn$
23@dont-email.me>
<
governor.swill@gmail.com> wrote:
Very happy to see Swallwell fail after his immature ignorant behavior with a Chink whore spy.
Monkey Pox, right on time to give Democrats an excuse to cheat in the next election.
In a setback for Visa in a case alleging the payment processor
is liable for the distribution of child pornography on Pornhub
and other sites operated by parent company MindGeek, a federal
judge ruled that it was reasonable to conclude that Visa
knowingly facilitated the criminal activity.
On Friday, July 29, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney of the
U.S. District Court of the Central District of California issued
a decision in the Fleites v. MindGeek case, denying Visa’s
motion to dismiss the claim it violated California’s Unfair
Competition Law — which prohibits unlawful, unfair or fraudulent
business acts and practices — by processing payments for child
porn. (A copy of the decision is available at this link.)
In the ruling, Carney held that the plaintiff “adequately
alleged” that Visa engaged in a criminal conspiracy with
MindGeek to monetize child pornography. Specifically, he wrote,
“Visa knew that MindGeek’s websites were teeming with monetized
child porn”; that there was a “criminal agreement to financially
benefit from child porn that can be inferred from [Visa’s]
decision to continue to recognize MindGeek as a merchant despite
allegedly knowing that MindGeek monetized a substantial amount
of child porn”; and that “the court can comfortably infer that
Visa intended to help MindGeek monetize child porn” by
“knowingly provid[ing] the tool used to complete the crime.”
“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,” Carney
wrote.
In a statement, a Visa spokesperson said: “Visa condemns sex
trafficking, sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse
materials as repugnant to our values and purpose as a company.
This pre-trial ruling is disappointing and mischaracterizes
Visa’s role and its policies and practices. Visa will not
tolerate the use of our network for illegal activity. We
continue to believe that Visa is an improper defendant in this
case.”
A rep for MindGeek provided this statement: “At this point in
the case, the court has not yet ruled on the veracity of the
allegations, and is required to assume all of the plaintiff’s
allegations are true and accurate. When the court can actually
consider the facts, we are confident the plaintiff’s claims will
be dismissed for lack of merit. MindGeek has zero tolerance for
the posting of illegal content on its platforms, and has
instituted the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated
platform history.”
The company’s statement continued, “We have banned uploads from
anyone who has not submitted government-issued ID that passes
third-party verification, eliminated the ability to download
free content, integrated several leading technological platform
and content moderation tools, instituted digital fingerprinting
of all videos found to be in violation of our Non-Consensual
Content and CSAM [child sexual abuse material] Policies to help
protect against removed videos being reposted, expanded our
moderation workforce and processes, and partnered with dozens of
non-profit organizations around the world. Any insinuation that
MindGeek does not take the elimination of illegal material
seriously is categorically false.”
In June, MindGeek CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo
resigned. The Montreal, Quebec-based company also laid off an
unknown number of employees. That came in the wake of a June 20
New Yorker exposé that found Pornhub hosted sexually explicit
nonconsensual videos including those with children.
The plaintiff in the case against MindGeek and Visa is Serena
Fleites, who, when she was 13, was pressured by her then-
boyfriend into making a sexually explicit video — which he
allegedly uploaded to Pornhub (with the title “13-Year Old
Brunette Shows Off For the Camera”) without her knowledge or
consent. Fleites’ attorneys say the video, which was alleged to
have been viewed millions of times on MindGeek sites, destroyed
her life: “While MindGeek profited from the child porn featuring
plaintiff, plaintiff was intermittently homeless or living in
her car, addicted to heroin, depressed and suicidal, and without
the support of her family,” her lawsuit, filed in June 2021,
states. Fleites’ story was featured by New York Times columnist
Nicholas Kristof in December 2020, who detailed how MindGeek
“monetizes child rapes.”
In his July 29 decision, Carney ruled partly in Visa’s favor. He
wrote in the opinion that Fleites “simply has no basis for
claiming Visa directly participated in the sex trafficking
ventures that harmed her.” In addition, he ordered Fleites to
provide “a more definite statement with respect to her common
law civil conspiracy cause of action against Visa.”
In a second ruling (available at this link), Carney compelled
MindGeek to undergo jurisdictional discovery, which attorneys
for Fleites said will reveal MindGeek’s “shadowy operations and
those controlling it” by exposing the defendant’s financial
relationships. “Where the money flows in the MindGeek web, which
may relate to ownership of the porn sites that generate revenue,
matters to the court’s jurisdictional analysis,” the judge said
in the opinion. “As the court sees it, financially benefitting
from the sexual exploitation of minors is the core of this case.”
On Saturday, activist investor Bill Ackman of Pershing Square
Holdings, who has previously called out the role of Visa and
Mastercard in enabling MindGeek’s ability to make money from
child pornography, posted a thread on Twitter about the ruling
in the case.
“Visa’s conduct here is inexcusable, likely to cause the company
incalculable financial and reputational damage” as well as
“create serious… personal liability and potential criminal
liability for the board,” Ackman wrote in part. According to
Ackman, neither he nor Pershing Square have any economic
interest, long or short, in Visa, Mastercard or any other
payments company, bank or financial institution.
According to Ackman, after he read the Times’ story about
Fleites and Pornub, he reached out to the CEOs of Visa and
Mastercard to express concerns about their part in enabling
MindGeek’s business. Shortly afterward, both companies cut off
consumer payment processing to MindGeek’s sites; within “a day
or so, MindGeek removed >10m illegal videos, 80% of its
content,” the hedge fund manager said. However, they both soon
reactivated business-to-business payments for the purchase of
ads on MindGeek sites and for subscriptions to “premium”
content, representing about 90% of the company’s revenue, per
Ackman.
Ackman wrote that Visa CEO Alfred Kelly “should know that the
majority of child trafficking victims are from lower-income
families including Black and Brown families. I would recommend
that Visa’s board, and separately Mr. Kelly, should hire
independent white collar and criminal counsel.” He concluded the
thread with, “Et tu, @Mastercard?”
Michael Bowe, partner at Brown Rudnick and lead attorney
representing Fleites in the lawsuit, said in a statement, “The
court’s holding that our detailed complaint adequately pleads
Visa was engaged in a criminal conspiracy to monetize child porn
means Visa and other credit card companies are finally going to
face the civil and perhaps criminal consequences of this
unconscionable and illegal activity.”
The case, Serena Fleites v. MindGeek S.A.R.L. et al., is Docket
No. 2:21-cv-04920-CJC-ADS in the U.S. District Court for the
Central District of California.
Fleites is one of 34 individual plaintiffs who last year sued
Pornhub and MindGeek, alleging exploitation and monetization of
child pornography, rape videos, trafficked content, stolen
content and other nonconsensual content. The litigation is the
first application to date of Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations (RICO), child pornography and trafficking laws
seeking to hold financial institutions accountable for illegal
conduct monetized by and through the systems of companies whose
payments they process.
VISA should be put out of business as a lesson.
https://news.yahoo.com/visa-intended-help-pornhub-parent-
125556303.html
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