SAN DIEGO (AP) — The founder of a California-based porn empire that recruited women with false modeling offers pleaded guilty to sex trafficking charges in a federal court, authorities said.

pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court in San Diego, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He faces a possible life sentence when he is sentenced Sept. 25.

Pratt, 42, was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list when he was arrested in Madrid in 2022, three years after he fled while facing sex trafficking charges.

Federal prosecutors said Pratt and his co-defendants used force, fraud and coercion to recruit hundreds of women, many of whom were in their late teens, for their adult videos.

A New Zealand native, he founded the now-defunct GirlsDoPorn website in San Diego. In 2019, he and others were charged in San Diego with sex crimes after being targeted in a civil lawsuit by 22 women who claimed they were victimized by fraud and breach of contract.

The women said they were plied with alcohol and marijuana before being rushed through signing a contract, which they were not allowed to read. Some said they were sexually assaulted and held in hotel rooms unwillingly until adult filming had ended.

A judge in 2020 found and handed down a $12.7 million judgment against Pratt, Matthew Isaac Wolfe and adult producer and performer Ruben Andre Garcia.