The FBI is offering a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of former Christchurch man Michael James Pratt.

The FBI says Pratt has ties to or may visit: New Zealand, Australia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Singapore, Japan, Chile, Croatia, and France.

From approximately 2012 to October 2019, in the Southern District of California and elsewhere, Michael James Pratt and others allegedly participated in a conspiracy to recruit young adult and minor women to engage in commercial sex acts by force, fraud and coercion.

Pratt and a co-conspirator owned and operated a pornography production company and online pornography websites, “GirlsDoPorn” and “GirlsDoToys.”

Pratt and his co-conspirators allegedly recruited young women from around the United States by posting advertisements for clothed modeling jobs on the Internet.

Pratt and his co-conspirators advised the women responding to the ads that the jobs were in fact for pornographic videos and that they would be paid between $3,000 to $5,000 U.S. dollars for a one-day video shoot.

To persuade the women to participate, Pratt and his co-conspirators allegedly convinced the women they would remain anonymous, that their videos would be provided to private collectors on DVD, and would not be posted on the Internet.

Pratt allegedly paid other young women working at his direction to act as references or provide false assurances to the women that, if they filmed a video, the video would not be posted online.

Some women were not permitted to leave the shooting locations until the videos were made and others were allegedly forced to perform certain sex acts they had declined to do.

Allegedly, some of the women were sexually assaulted. Pratt’s pornography websites generated more than $17 million U.S. dollars in revenue. A federal arrest warrant was issued for Pratt in the United States District Court, Southern District of California, on November 6, 2019.