Lucy Guo Lawsuit: Passes Sued for Exploitation of Minors

The Lucy Guo lawsuit is a federal class action accusing the Passes founder and her creator platform of producing, possessing, and distributing child sexual abuse material involving a teenage creator. Filed in February 2025 by plaintiff Alice Rosenblum, the case survived a motion to dismiss in February 2026 and is now proceeding in federal court in California.¹

Rosenblum filed the complaint on February 26, 2025, originally in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The defendants are Passes, Inc., Guo herself, talent agent Alec Celestin, former director of talent Lani Ginoza, and two affiliated entities, WLM Management LLC and Nofhotos Group LLC. The complaint alleges violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252 and 2252A, the federal statutes criminalizing the production, receipt, distribution, and possession of child pornography, along with related Florida criminal statutes.²

What the Plaintiff Says Happened

Rosenblum was 17 when she began creating content for Passes. According to the complaint and reporting by TechCrunch, Celestin, who held an equity stake in the platform, groomed her and directed her to produce sexually explicit photos and videos while she was still a minor.³ Forbes reported that Celestin had seen Rosenblum’s driver’s license and encouraged the content as part of an “18th birthday themed marketing campaign.”⁴

The complaint alleges Passes staff manually removed safety blocks on Rosenblum’s account, lifting restrictions that would have prevented users from sending direct messages to a minor. Agents of Passes are also alleged to have impersonated Rosenblum during a sexually explicit conversation with a paying member, generating roughly $47,000 in revenue from that single exchange.⁴

The broader context is that Passes, unlike many competitors, allowed creators as young as 15 to join with parental consent, and Guo had told TechCrunch that Passes’ content guidelines were “more lax” than those of competitors. Days before the lawsuit was filed, Passes abruptly banned all underage users and purged their content from the platform.⁴

What Guo Is Personally Accused Of

The central allegation against Guo is that she personally intervened to override internal safety measures that would have flagged Rosenblum’s content as child sexual abuse material. The suit claims Guo and the other defendants knew Rosenblum was a minor and knew the platform held sexually explicit material of her.³

Forbes reported that Guo acknowledged in a since-deleted tweet that the company’s AI content classifiers had been disabled for accounts managed by Celestin. Guo described the decision as one of “cost and trust,” saying the classifiers were “expensive to run” and that the company “trusted a talent manager to abide by our TOS.” She later called the exemption “an important learning lesson.”⁴

How Passes and Guo Have Responded

Guo and Passes deny the allegations. A company spokesperson called the claim that Guo overrode safety measures “completely and utterly false,” saying there was “no record or recollection” of Guo interacting with Rosenblum.³ In a March 2025 press release, Passes labeled the lawsuit “meritless” and “categorically false” and said the claims “recklessly disregard the truth.”⁵

The company’s central defense pins responsibility on Celestin, whom Passes described as a “former social media contractor” acting independently. Passes said Celestin and his assistant were “intentionally deceiving Passes and violating its rules” and cut ties with him and his agency.⁵ Passes also said the lawsuit was filed only after opposing counsel “demanded millions” from the company, which it refused to pay, and in a blog post characterized the case as a “coordinated attempt” by competitors to defame Guo.⁶

In their April 28, 2025 motion to dismiss, lawyers for Guo and Passes called the complaint a “transparent attempt by Plaintiffs’ counsel to pursue the ‘deep pockets’ of Passes, a successful startup, and its wealthy founder.” The motion also asked the court to strike the class action designation and, alternatively, to transfer the case to Los Angeles, where Celestin and Ginoza reside.⁷

Where the Case Stands Now

The case was transferred to the Central District of California, where it is docketed as case number 2:25-cv-08457 before Judge Josephine L. Staton, with Magistrate Judge Patricia Donahue assigned.⁸

On February 4, 2026, the court largely denied the motions to dismiss filed by both the Passes defendants and Ginoza. The ruling rejected the defendants’ argument that they were shielded from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally protects online platforms from being treated as publishers of user-generated content. The court also found that the complaint’s allegations were sufficient to state potential violations of the federal child pornography statutes.¹ The case will now move into discovery.

A Separate Lawsuit You May Have Seen

There is a second, unrelated case involving Passes that sometimes gets confused with the Rosenblum matter. In January 2024, rival creator platform Fanfix sued Passes in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleging trade secret theft and anti-competitive conduct. That case is still open, with a jury trial scheduled for June 29, 2026.⁹ It has nothing to do with the child sexual abuse material allegations, though Passes has cited the competitive rivalry as context for what it calls a broader “smear campaign” against the company.¹⁰

1
Clark Smith Villazor LLP. Federal Court Rules That Claims on Behalf of a Victim of Child Pornography Should Proceed Against Passes Inc
2
PR Newswire. Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Passes, Founder Lucy Guo, and Others for Distribution of Child Pornography
3
TechCrunch. Creator Monetization Platform Passes Sued Over Alleged Distribution of CSAM
4
Forbes. How Underage Creators Became a Threat to Lucy Guo’s OnlyFans Rival
5
PR Newswire. Passes Addresses Misinformation and Meritless Lawsuit Against the Company
6
Passes. A Note to the Passes Community
7
Inc. Lucy Guo’s Startup Passes Calls Child Pornography Lawsuit Defamatory and Seeks Dismissal
8
PACER Monitor. Alice Rosenblum v. Passes, Inc. et al
9
UniCourt. Fanfixapp LLC v. Passes, Inc.
10
Rockwater. Passes Raises $40M