On 9 July a federal judge refused to dismiss sex trafficking conspiracy and unfair competition claims against Visa. The ruling, in Serena Fleites et al v. MindGeek S.A.R.L. et al before Judge Wesley L. Hsu in the Central District of California, covers that case and 14 related ones. Visa’s response is due 8 September. The company declined to comment.
Trade coverage led with the plaintiffs’ claim that Visa excused MindGeek from its merchant standards because of the transaction volume it generated. The court rejected that allegation. The line the order actually draws sits somewhere else, and it is a line every acquirer and ISO should be able to find on a map of its own processes.
Only one agreement allegation against Visa survived
Grounds pleaded for saying Visa agreed to join MindGeek’s conduct, Third Amended Complaint paragraphs 304 to 312, ruled on 9 July 2026.
Four allegations failed, and they failed for the same reason
Plaintiffs pleaded five separate grounds for saying Visa agreed to join MindGeek’s conduct. Four did not survive. Visa permitting its network banks to onboard MindGeek “reflects, at most, a failure to act, not affirmative participation.” Visa ignoring its own internal standards, where reports “would have caused Visa to sanction and eventually terminate any other merchant,” was treated as the same thing: providing network access despite knowledge, which the court had already held insufficient.
The order is explicit about why that matters. On the onboarding claim it found “no active engagement, no customization, no implementation support and no joint strategy,” only a business relationship continued in the face of controversy. An earlier order had already shown where the opposite reading ends: if passive nonfeasance and general awareness were enough, “virtually any vendor with commercial ties to MindGeek could face liability, including utility providers.”
| Paragraph | Allegation | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| 304 | Visa let network banks onboard MindGeek despite illegal content | Failed. Nonfeasance, not participation |
| 305 | Visa ignored its own standards, would have terminated any other merchant | Failed. Network access despite knowledge |
| 308 | Visa worked with MindGeek to develop payment structures | Failed. Conclusory |
| 310 | Visa helped minimise the visibility of illegal conduct | Survived |
| 311 | Visa and MindGeek coordinated their public comments | Failed. Not indicia of coordination |
Source: US District Court, Central District of California, order of 9 July 2026, Dkt. 732
The surviving claim is about advice, not access
One allegation cleared the bar. Plaintiffs pleaded that Visa and MindGeek “collaborated on minimizing the visibility of illegal conduct,” by suggesting changes to words and descriptions connected to illegal content, and by removing restrictions on payments that carried clear indicia of trafficking and “would have resulted in a suspension or blocks on other merchant accounts.” The pattern pleaded as an example will be familiar to anyone who has run monitoring: regular payments from large numbers of purportedly independent cam models landing in single accounts.
Visa singled out a particular merchant and provided business advice as to how that merchant might avoid regulatory scrutiny.
Order of 9 July 2026, on the one allegation that survived
That is the whole difference. Continuing to serve a merchant you have doubts about is nonfeasance. Telling that merchant how to reword its billing descriptor, and lifting the flags that would have stopped anybody else, is participation. The same allegation carried the intent element too, precisely because it is not “passive inaction.”
Payment processor liability for merchant conduct now has a visible line
Visa is not alleged to be a trafficker or a participant in a trafficking venture. The order places it exactly where the four party model puts it: Visa “imposes rules governing merchants and transactions, but it is ultimately the Acquirers that maintain merchant relationships and monitor transaction activity.”
That sentence is why this is not only a Visa problem. The party that actually monitors the account, advises on the descriptor and grants the exception is usually the acquirer, the ISO or the PSP. None of this requires bad faith at underwriting. It requires helping a merchant become harder to see, which is what transaction laundering is and the reason descriptor changes attract scrutiny in the first place. It is the same direction of travel as the Dutch server seizure, where content liability landed on the platform’s payments position rather than only on its hosting.
Where your exposure sits
Suppression is the risk, not tolerance. A documented decision to keep a merchant is defensible. An undocumented instruction to change wording, or a monitoring rule switched off for one merchant and nobody else, is the fact pattern this order says can amount to agreement. If your team has ever advised a merchant on how to look quieter, that advice is now the part worth reviewing. Our guide to adult platform content moderation covers what the networks already require on paper.
This is a pleading stage ruling. The court accepted the allegations as true because at this stage it must, and made no finding that Visa did any of it. Standing, the TVPRA conspiracy count and the California unfair competition count all proceed. The common law civil conspiracy count was dismissed with prejudice. Payments Dive reports that the court separately denied Visa’s bid for Rule 11 sanctions against plaintiffs’ counsel on 22 July.
- US District Court, Central District of California, “Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Defendant Visa’s Motion to Dismiss,” Fleites v. MindGeek S.A.R.L., No. 2:21-cv-04920-WLH-ADS, Dkt. 732, order of 9 July 2026, 9 July 2026.
- CourtListener, “Serena Fleites v. MindGeek S.A.R.L.,” case docket, accessed 4 August 2026.
- Payments Dive, “Visa loses bid to dismiss porn lawsuit,” news report, 3 August 2026. First reported by Payments Dive.
