This is a direct transcript from this video by Moon, uploaded 13 March 2025: (125) The Hunt for the King of P*rn – YouTube

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The Hunt for the King of P*rn

The sun had barely risen over one of London’s most exclusive streets when investigator Alexi Mastros took his position 20 meters away from a mansion worth tens of millions of pounds. He was hunting for a ghost—a man who controlled one of the internet’s most visited websites but had managed to leave almost no trace of his existence online.

While Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress and Elon Musk made headlines with every tweet, the king of internet adult content remained completely invisible. Googling his name would bring up virtually nothing.

As the first hints of daylight touched the mansion’s windows, Alexi noticed movement inside. After months of searching, he was about to come face to face with one of the internet’s most powerful and secretive figures. But just finding him was only part of the story.

Why had this man gone to such extraordinary lengths to keep his identity hidden? What unethical, if not evil, activities had afforded him such a luxurious lifestyle while staying under the radar? The answers would reveal a tale of exploitation, corporate intrigue, and a reckoning that would eventually bring down an empire.

The hunt for this man began in December 2020 when something unprecedented happened in the murky world of online adult content. Visa and MasterCard, two of the world’s largest payment processors, suddenly cut ties with one of the internet’s most visited websites, P*rnHub. This dramatic move was triggered by a New York Times investigation by Nicholas Kristoff, which revealed that the platform had become infested with videos of assault and abuse.

Kristoff’s investigation reported shocking content: unconscious women being assaulted, explicit acts filmed without consent, and blatantly underage victims. The article even alleged that men were seen touching girls’ eyeballs to prove they were incapacitated.

Later that same month, the Financial Times dropped a bombshell of its own. Investigating P*rnHub’s elusive parent company, MindGeek, reporters stumbled upon traces of an enigmatic figure lurking in the footnotes—a man who seemed to pull the strings from the shadows. Yet, nobody knew who he actually was.

His name, as far as the Financial Times could determine, was Bernard Bergemar. But beyond that, they found almost nothing. It was as if the person controlling one of the internet’s most powerful companies had been deliberately erased.

Back in 2020, searching for his name on Google would have resulted in a “Google whack”—a rare early-internet phenomenon where a search query returns only a single result. For someone controlling one of the most powerful companies in online media, this level of invisibility was almost unheard of.

PrnHub wasn’t just another website. It received 3.5 billion views a month, making it more popular than Amazon and even Netflix. MindGeek, the company behind PrnHub, wasn’t running just one site. It was a vast digital empire that controlled RedTube, Reality Kings, Brazzers—essentially every major adult content site.

They managed everything from Playboy’s digital content to multiple production studios, with 15 terabytes of video uploads every day—equivalent to half of Netflix’s entire content library. But content moderation was dangerously inadequate. Until late 2020, uploading a video required nothing more than an email address. A small team of moderators had to review over 82,000 videos per session, described by some reports as playing “Russian roulette with people’s lives.”

When these scandals broke, MindGeek was forced to purge its platform, deleting 10 million videos and over 30 million images—one of the biggest takedowns of content in internet history. But it wasn’t enough. The company knew it wasn’t verifying IDs or ages; they had designed their system to maximize profits over safety.

Survivors of abuse, whose most traumatic moments were filmed and uploaded without consent, were trapped in a nightmare. Videos were downloaded, re-uploaded, and monetized, ensuring their pain was immortalized.

One survivor, Serena Flates, was a straight-A student who had never kissed a boy. Forced into making a video, she had no idea it would end up on P*rnHub with the title “13-year-old brunette shows off for the camera.” Before she even knew it existed, over 400,000 people had watched it, including her classmates.

Desperate and terrified, Serena posed as her mother to beg P*rnHub to remove the video. Even as comments identified it as child abuse, the company let it remain online for weeks. Each time it was removed, it would reappear. One re-upload alone gathered 2.7 million views.

MindGeek wasn’t just hosting these videos—it was actively profiting from them. Reports described how the company shared these videos across its network to maximize revenue, with its published annual revenue figures reaching nearly half a billion dollars a year.

Then came the next breakthrough.

At a lavish Hollywood Hills party filled with celebrities, one man stood out. He wasn’t famous, but his face was familiar. Captured in a photo by actor Michael Tay, this single digital breadcrumb would be key to unraveling his hidden identity.

Investigators traced the photo’s tags to a private Facebook profile with only six friends, which led them to a woman named Priscila—a Brazilian model who turned out to be Bergemar’s wife. While her husband mastered digital invisibility, Priscila maintained an active Instagram presence, flaunting luxury yachts, designer dresses, and massive diamonds.

But one detail stood out in her bio: London.

Corporate records claimed Bergemar was living in China, which made no sense. Why would a man running a Canadian company be in China? The answer came when investigators found Priscila’s personal blog, which hadn’t scrubbed metadata from its photos. One image revealed the exact address of their London mansion.

The hunt for the adult content king had a name—and now, it had an address.

Bergemar wasn’t always a ghost. He grew up in Austria, the son of a farmer, and eventually attended the University of Chicago’s business school. He was brilliant, but instead of pursuing traditional finance, he saw an opportunity in the internet’s Wild West.

The rise of YouTube had made video hosting easier, and adult content was about to experience its own Gold Rush. He wasn’t the only player. Another key figure was Fabian Thylmann, a tech genius who tracked user behavior and used that knowledge to dominate the industry. Thylmann’s company Manwin grew into a monopoly, acquiring P*rnHub and dozens of other companies.

But in 2012, German prosecutors charged Thylmann with tax evasion, forcing him to sell the company. The buyers? Two MindGeek executives—who later sold the majority stake to Bernard Bergemar.

Under Bergemar, MindGeek became an unstoppable force, using big data to predict and manipulate viewer preferences, in a way some experts suggested was more advanced than Netflix’s algorithm. But beneath the empire’s glossy surface, a dark reality persisted—one built on exploitation.

As dawn broke on that quiet London street, Alexi Mastros wasn’t just confronting a billionaire—he was bringing accountability to an industry that had operated in the shadows for too long.

For a man who had profited by exposing the most intimate moments of millions—many without their consent—Bergemar had gone to extraordinary lengths to keep his own life private.

At 8:30 a.m., movement was spotted behind the mansion’s curtains. Moments later, Bergemar emerged. Wearing dad jeans and looking nothing like the media mogul he was, he froze in shock.

“I’m very sorry to disturb you at your house,” Mastros called out. “I just wondered if I could ask you a few questions about MindGeek.”

Bergemar’s face twisted with anger. He didn’t answer. Instead, he turned away and disappeared into the shadows—his years of carefully constructed anonymity stripped away in an instant.

But the consequences were far from over.

Months later, lawsuits were filed against him personally. His own wife publicly called for him to cut ties with the company. In 2023, MindGeek’s executives resigned, and the company was sold off and rebranded as “Aylo.”

But for survivors like Serena, no rebrand could erase the devastation.

Today, nearly 300 victims are pursuing lawsuits against MindGeek. The legal battle is expanding, targeting financial institutions like Visa and hedge funds that allegedly profited from child exploitation.

Bergemar may have finally been found—but he was just one face behind an empire built on darkness. The real reckoning may still be coming.