Pornhub’s Executives Exposed as Fake

For almost a decade, Pornhub’s shadowy and controversial parent company MindGeek, who has been reported as owning a monopoly on the global porn industry, has operated under a shroud of secrecy disguised as a “technology company.”

Now it appears that even their executives are fake.

According to a recent article by Business Insider, none of the Pornhub executives typically quoted in stories and publications have been verified as actually being real.

Since Pornhub has come under fire for its complicity with hosting rape, trafficking and child sex abuse material, the CEO of MindGeek has been eerily silent, never speaking publicly about the allegations or responding to interview requests.

The only public correspondence from the company has been through Pornhub’s VP “Corey Price,” or a few other supposed individuals. Journalists who have covered Pornhub say they never interacted directly with Price or other Pornhub executives and that all their quotes came via press releases or email exchanges with people who identified as Pornhub representatives Chris Jackson and Mike Williams.¹

RELATED: Pornhub Strikes Again, Verifies Child Trafficker

Online and public profile searches consistently generate data that could be used to verify a person’s identity or, at the very least, their existence as a real person. But searches done by Business Insider’s team on the Corey Price character and the others have come back empty. The name’s association with Pornhub goes back as far as 2011, and stories from TMZ and CNN quote him as a representative of Pornhub. Corey also seems to have many titles at the company as well, being interchangeably quoted as “VP,” “VP of marketing,” “administrative director” and “VP of operations.” Yet in all that time, there is literally zero public evidence that he actually exists.

Business Insider went on to say that they’ve seen zero evidence that supports the existence of multiple Pornhub VPs and spokespeople.

A page on quotes.net attributed to Price and his various quotes, uses a picture of a man named Nuri Gulver, an executive at London ad agency Accompany who won a contest in 2014 to become Pornhub’s first creative director.² When Business Insider reached out to Gulver they received no response, but the next day the picture was suspiciously taken down.

The only thing Business Insider did discover in their investigation was a phone number that led back to Pornhub’s PR company 5W Public Relations. When questioned about the existence of these quoted individuals, 5W spokesperson Jason Heller responded “we use discretion to guard the identities of team members who don’t want their full names used publicly for personal and safety reasons.”³ In fact, it appears 5W is responsible for all of Pornhub’s public correspondence.

How convenient. So as the world turns its attention to the atrocities being hosted and profited from by Pornhub, it appears the execs at MindGeek don’t have the metal to face the world and answer for these allegations. No public appearances, interviews, or comments. Instead, they’ve responded only with canned statements by fictional characters through a PR firm to “protect” themselves.

The reporters, who chose to remain anonymous, said they had no idea that they were interacting with a PR firm, and not the actual company executives. They revealed that the personnel at Pornhub use different email addresses and domain names to correspond with them. Business Insider went on to say that they’ve seen zero evidence that supports the existence of multiple Pornhub VPs and spokespeople.

One of Pornhub’s most public figures, social media manager Aria Nathanial, seems to be a ghost as well. Business Insider found no information to verify her existence either.

Beyond the empty searches, we’ve seen other shady and suspicious behavior from Pornhub. Feras Antoon, the CEO of MindGeek, started following campaign founder Laila Mickelwait on Twitter. As soon as she called attention to it, the profile name, location and handle was quickly changed. It appears Pornhub’s CEO like others at the company like to lurk around in the shadows while profiting from the literal public exposure of their victims.⁴

RELATED: Pornhub on the Defense: How They’ve Responded to Traffickinghub

While Pornhub’s CEO was trying to secretly follow Laila’s personal Twitter account, Pornhub’s official Twitter account liked and unliked tweets of Laila’s all while refusing to respond or comment on allegations being raised. It was also discovered that the photo often associated with Feras Antoon online is not him.⁵

It’s obvious that the executives at MindGeek are taking care to protect themselves and stay out of the public view. My question of course is, why? Throughout the Traffickinghub campaign, Pornhub has released statements from “Price,” attacking victims and accusers, and denying any fault whatsoever. So they should feel no need to conceal identities or back down from questioning. But instead, they use fake names, fake photos, fictional characters, and PR firms to conceal themselves and skirt accountability. Even MindGeek’s website conceals the fact that they are the biggest online porn company in the world.

Name another legitimate company that resorts to such tactics? I’ll wait. My mom taught me long ago that an innocent person never feels the need to hide. Pornhub has made an unfathomable amount of money over the years, profiting off of non-consensual porn, child sexual abuse material, trafficking, and rape. Now they are using fake names and fictional characters to conceal themselves, and seem to enjoy “getting away with it.”

But their time is up. Pornhub has earned the scrutiny and the investigation. The pattern of illegal activity on their site, combined with the lies and suspicious publicity tactics, is grounds for a full investigation from governing authorities. MindGeek has gotten away with far too much for far too long, and it’s time for their executives to come out of hiding and answer for themselves. Click below to join the fight to expose MindGeek and bring their “real” executives to justice for profiting off of sex crimes.

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