TALLAHASSEE—Florida's chief legal officer is suing porn companies headquartered in the Czech Republic and Miami for failing to block kids from accessing adult content.
In a complaint filed Tuesday in the Twelfth Judicial Circuit in Sarasota County, state attorney general James Uthmeier is seeking over $50,000 per violation from the nine companies—which are behind five websites—for flouting a 2024 law requiring age verification tools on porn sites to keep out under-18-year-olds.
"Multiple porn companies are flagrantly breaking Florida’s age verification law by exposing children to harmful, explicit content. As a father of young children, and as Attorney General, this is completely unacceptable,” Uthmeier said in a press release.
“We are taking legal action against these online pornographers who are willfully preying on the innocence of children for their financial gain," he added.
The 35-page complaint details explicit videos, thumbnails, and titles stamped across XVideos.com, XNXX.com, Traffic Factory, BangBros.com, and GirlsGoneWild.com—none of which are stoppered by an age verification tool.
According to the complaint, XVideos and XNXX have a banner on their sites decrying "The SCAM of age verification" because the "idiocracy has won" and "we already know we’ll lose almost all our users in the process."
The Czech companies operating the sites are WebGroup Czech Republic, NKL Associates, Sonesta Technologies, Sonesta Media, GGW Group, GTFLIX TV, and Traffic F. They're all listed at the same Prague address, and are all run by the same two men, the complaint says.
These men are Stephane Pacaud, a French porn owner once listed as the 245th richest man in France, and Robert Seifert, described as a Czech "entrepreneur" by European news outlets.
The other two companies, Sonesta Florida and GGW Florida, are headquartered in Pinecrest and Downtown Miami. Both are run by Andrew Hendrixson, the complaint says.
Uthmeier's complaint hinges on a sweeping 2024 law restricting child access to social media and pornographic websites. Various attempts to challenge the pornographic restrictions were dropped last month.
The withdrawal came two months after Uthmeier, newly appointed as attorney general, sent a slew of letters to various pornographic companies demanding they verify the ages of web surfers.
As evidenced by Tuesday's complaint, many have yet to comply.
XVideos is the 20th most popular website worldwide with 1,228 billion monthly visitors. 18 million of those monthly come from Florida, the complaint alleges. XNXX is the 30th most popular website worldwide with 740.4 million monthly visitors, approximately 16 million of which are Floridians.
