A federal judge has ruled that Visa must face conspiracy claims in Fleites v. MindGeek, according to reporting from AVN on July 15. US District Judge Wesley L. Hsu of the Central District of California found that the plaintiffs had adequately alleged an agreement, which is the element the claim had failed on before.
“Accordingly, the court finds that this allegation sufficiently demonstrates conspiracy,” Hsu wrote.
Nothing has been proven. This is a ruling on whether the claim can proceed, not a finding that Visa did anything. For a case that has now flipped direction more than once, that distinction is the whole story.
How the case got here
Serena Fleites sued MindGeek, now Aylo, in 2021 in the Central District of California, naming Visa among the defendants. Her allegations concern content she says was uploaded without her consent when she was a minor, and the theory against Visa is that the payment network knowingly enabled the monetization of that material.
In 2022, then-presiding Judge Cormac Carney denied Visa’s motion to dismiss, writing that Visa lent MindGeek “a much-needed tool,” its payment network, “with the alleged knowledge that there was a wealth of monetized child porn on MindGeek’s websites.” Visa called that ruling disappointing and said it mischaracterized the company’s role.
The case then turned the other way. Around September 2025, Judge Hsu granted Visa’s motion to dismiss the conspiracy and TVPRA claims, leaning on the Supreme Court’s standard in Twitter v. Taamneh: passive commercial relationships and ordinary business dealings do not by themselves establish intent or agreement to further trafficking. He left the plaintiffs room to amend, and they did.
What changed
The revived claim rests on new allegations in the amended complaint. Reporting indicates they concern advice given to MindGeek about how flagged content was described or handled, which the plaintiffs argue goes beyond a passive processing relationship into something closer to coordination. The precise contours of those allegations come from secondary reporting rather than the order itself, so treat the detail cautiously until the docket text circulates.
Separately, the court reportedly dismissed claims against the so-called Redwood defendants, hedge-fund entities that financed MindGeek, finding the connection to the alleged conduct too remote. Plaintiffs’ counsel signaled an intent to appeal that part.
Visa’s position throughout has been consistent: it operates as a remote intermediary, several steps removed from any content decision, without the intent or agreement conspiracy liability requires.
Why the industry is watching
Payment access is the industry’s single most fragile dependency. Processors have already shown they will cut off entire platforms rather than litigate edge cases, and every tightening of the liability standard makes that reflex faster.
If a payment network can be held to a conspiracy claim on allegations about advice it gave a client, the compliance posture for every processor serving adult platforms changes, and it changes in the direction of dropping accounts. That is the practical stake here, well before any jury sees this case. Litigation this long-running rarely ends where a single ruling leaves it, and this one is still moving.
