He was one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. A New Zealander, sentenced in the United States to life imprisonment, was arrested on Friday in Madrid, Spain, at a hotel where he was staying under one of the false identities. An offer of $100,000 had been made to whoever could locate this forty-year-old who has been persecuted by an international arrest warrant since 2019.
According to Spanish police, his presence in the country had been suspected for some time. Even some time before, American investigators had gone to the place, but “their searches”, carried out “in Barcelona”, had been “unsuccessful”, according to a press release.
$17 million through his criminal enterprise
The man arrested is named Michael James Pratt, according to a source familiar with the matter. He was sentenced to life in prison for “child pornography”, “sexual exploitation”, “sexual assault” and “illicit enrichment”. On its website, the FBI specifies that this New Zealander had recruited several young adult women and minors in the United States and Canada between 2012 and 2019 for forced sexual acts, through classified ads for modeling jobs.
Owner of a production company and pornographic websites, he would have then published the videos of these young women. Thanks to these actions, he would have accumulated more than 17 million dollars, according to the authorities. Also accused of having sexually assaulted several young women, Michael James Pratt had fled after his life sentence.
Source: BFM TV
