Miami influencer turned tech entrepreneur Lucy Guo spoke out against the bombshell lawsuit claiming she forced underage girls to create porn to boost her social media platform.
The 30-year-old multi-millionaire and her platform Passes have been accused of running a scheme to recruit teen girls and groom them to create sexually explicit material to sell on the app.
Passes is a subscription-based content app – with big money backing from the likes of Jake Paul and Paris Hilton – that allows children between the ages of 15 to 17 to join with parental consent.
The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of Florida, claimed Guo knowingly waived Passes’ safety controls so her employees could sell content of then 17-year-old Alice Rosenblum.
Guo – whose net worth is $500 million – vehemently denied the allegations and claimed the lawsuit is a ‘coordinated attempt to defame Passes’ founder and status as the premier creator platform.’
‘To be clear, these accusations are false and being wielded to undermine the success of the company we have built over the last three years,’ she said in a statement shared on Instagram.
‘Lucy Guo and Passes never approved or condoned the posting of underage explicit content on our platform.
‘We disapprove of the actions allegedly taken by the plaintiff’s talent manager and any attempt to involve us in this matter is baseless, which we intend to prove.’
Rosenblum – now 18 – claimed in the new lawsuit that she was recruited by one of Passes’ agents, Alec Celestin, to ‘create images and videos of herself engaged in sexually explicit conduct.’
Celestin allegedly started messaging Rosenblum online in July 2024 and recruited her to ‘knowingly produce, market, sell and distribute child pornography’ despite her telling him that she was underage.
The lawsuit claimed Celestin invited the then-17-year-old to his Los Angeles home on August 10 to ‘create images and videos of her engaged in sexually explicit conduct.’
That same day he allegedly helped Rosenblum create a profile on Passes and got Guo to waive the age requirement so the pornographic material could be uploaded to the app’s data storage known as ‘The Vault.’
‘Guo, knowing that [Rosenblum] was a minor and of Celestin’s plans, directly orchestrated the removal of the Passes verification of parental consent requirement,’ the lawsuit said.
‘Guo instructed [Rosenblum], among other things, on how and where to upload content onto the Passes Vault system. Guo also told [her] that “you can upload anything.”‘
The filings then claim that Guo and her company directed Rosenblum to continue creating pornographic content that they used to target and profit off of high-spending subscribers.
‘[Defendants] conspired to market, sell and distribute images and videos of [Rosenblum] engaged in sexually explicit conduct through the Passes internet messaging system to Passes customers, including those known as “big spenders” and “whales,” in exchange for money,’ the lawsuit said.
The tech entrepreneur claimed she never spoke to Rosenblum and denied Celestin worked for her.
‘I I HAD ZERO interaction with the plaintiff (calls, texts, calendar invites, emails, etc). I do not have any contact information of hers,’ she said on X.
‘I do not condone the actions described, and Alec Celestin was not an agent of passes nor was he ever an employee.
‘We are confident the facts are on our side and look forward to presenting those facts in court.’
Guo made named for herself as a successful programmer at a young age by creating one of the first-ever Twitter bots that allowed users to auto-follow based on specific hashtags, according to the New York Post.
She was once awarded the coveted PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel Fellowship and made the Forbes ’30 Under 30′ list in 2018, then founded Passes in 2022.