MrDeepFakes: Hospital pharmacist David Do exposed as the operator of the deepfake porn platform

At first glance he seems respectable, owns a house with his girlfriend in Markham near Toronto, drives a Tesla and earns $121,000 a year as a hospital pharmacist. But the facade is deceptive: extensive research by numerous media outlets revealed that 36-year-old David Do is one of the main people behind the website MrDeepFakes – the one with By far the largest portal for AI-generated sex videos with prominent women.

On the platform, the faces of celebrities were mounted on the bodies of actresses in porn videos and the content was then distributed without their consent.

In an episode of her 14-part documentary series “Searching for Mr. DeepFakes,” hotel heiress Paris Hilton and journalist Laurie Segall show the double life of the man behind the notorious website. His identity remained unknown for more than a decade.

What did Mr. DeepFakes show?

Mr. DeepFakes was visited by more than 18 million users monthly. The website hosted tens of thousands of deepfake videos and images of actresses, models, singers, athletes, politicians, royals and social media influencers – created without their consent and sometimes with violent content.

Thanks to legal gray areas in the digital space, the platform was able to operate legally for years. Only women were affected. In May 2025, the website was shut down after the loss of a key service provider. At the time, Mr. DeepFakes explained: “The loss of data makes continued operation impossible. We will not be launching the website again.”

Who found David Do?

Laurie Segall, a former tech journalist at CNN, and investigative journalist Eric Szeto from CBC News are behind the research.

Segall received a tip about the website Mr. DeepFakes via social media in 2022. The content of the videos shocked her. But the community discussion forums seemed even more alarming to her. There, users openly planned to manipulate women from their personal environment – including colleagues, relatives and acquaintances – using deepfakes.

Segall then began a digital manhunt. She hired a team of hackers to follow the anonymous operator’s digital trail.

How did the hackers get on David Do’s trail?

In December 2024, a hacker identified a user named “dpfks” who was acting as an administrator of the website. But his role went far beyond that: “dpfks” itself produced more than 150 fake videos. He also uploaded a folder with over 6,000 images of the face of US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and helped numerous users create deepfake videos.

“Obviously ‘dpfks’ played a central role,” he told the Danish newspaper “Politen”.

Shortly thereafter, the hacker came across a Gmail account with the same five consonants in the username. The account used an unusual password – a unique code made up of four numbers and seven uppercase and lowercase letters. When the hacker checked this password in other records, he found a private Hotmail address that used the same combination. The account belonged to a pharmacist named David Do. Further investigations into the “dpfks” Gmail account ultimately led directly to connections with MrDeepFakes.

How does David Do live?

David Do leads an inconspicuous life with his girlfriend. The man of Vietnamese origin has been working as a pharmacist in a hospital in Markham, Canada, since 2015.

“Outside his home, no one could say a bad word about him. We even found an Instagram post that shows him working in the hospital during the corona pandemic,” Segall told the New York Post.

There are numerous pictures of David Do on the social media profiles of friends and relatives. However, he hardly publishes any photos of himself. An exception is a picture on his Airbnb profile that shows him smiling in a light blue shirt.

How does that fit together?

According to Danish researcher Pernille Rasmussen, such a double life is not at all unusual. People who create and consume such content could easily switch between their online behavior and their everyday lives.

“You can switch seamlessly between perpetrators on the Internet and normal interactions with women in everyday life. They probably have sisters, friends and colleagues. At the same time, they feel the need to prove their masculinity and consolidate their social status in digital communities by abusing women,” Rasmussen told Politics.

Why is Paris Hilton involved in the research?

During the course of the investigation, dozens of those affected came forward and made the enormous extent of the abuse on the platform visible. One of them was entrepreneur and hotel heiress Paris Hilton.

There are reportedly more than 100,000 explicit deepfakes of Hilton circulating on the Internet. An intimate video of her was published when she was just 19 years old.

“It felt like I had been digitally raped – and the whole world was watching and laughing. I’ll have to live with this for the rest of my life,” the now 45-year-old told the New York Post.

For years, Hilton has advocated for stricter laws to protect victims of AI-generated content. Among other things, she supports the so-called Defiance Act. “There were no laws to protect me back then. If I can help today to ensure that other young women don’t have to go through what I experienced, it means a lot to me,” she said.

What consequences does the scandal have for David Do?

The revelations had far-reaching consequences for Do. After an internal investigation, he is no longer working as a hospital pharmacist, as the Toronto Sun reported on Thursday. In addition, professional proceedings are ongoing against him by the Ontario College of Pharmacists for alleged improper conduct.

Karin Leuthold (kle), born in 1968, has been working for 20 Minuten since 2005 and is currently working at the news desk.