When Hot Girls Wanted, a controversial documentary on the amateur porn industry, first hit Netflix in 2015, a talent agent named Riley Reynolds emerged as the new face of Florida’s adult industry. The movie, produced by actress Rashida Jones, followed a few young girls as they entered the porn world, and Reynolds acted as the gatekeeper, booking the actresses through his talent agency, Hussie Models LLC, and putting them up in his “model houses”—small, ranch-style homes in the suburbs of South Florida.

The film viewed Reynolds through a somewhat critical lens, featuring footage of the agent discussing his preference for teenage models he calls “teeny-boppers,” and an explanation of why he’ll never run short on talent. “Every day,” he says, “another girl turns 18.”

Even still, the husky 29-year-old survived the movie’s reception relatively unscathed. Reviews hailed him as likable and camera-friendly, a clean-cut alternative to the misogynistic opportunists viewers might expect. The media attention brought Reynolds more talent—he told one journalist that four new recruits reached out to him the very week it dropped. The agent even returned to make an appearance in the movie’s short-lived spin-off series, Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On. On the whole, Reynolds came off, as one critic put it, “less as a porn Svengali and more as a den father of sorts.”

But one of Hussie Models’ performers, an adult actress who performs under the name “Lenna Lux,” recently filed a lawsuit which complicates that portrait. Lux, who did not want her real name used, alleges that Reynolds lied about his credentials—and has been lying for over three years. The complaint alleges that Reynolds, although he claims to be a licensed and bonded talent agent, has never been authorized to work as an agent in Florida. Operating a talent agency without a license constitutes a third-degree felony in the state of Florida, and is punishable by up to five years in prison.

If Reynolds was unauthorized as an agent, he should not have been able to take a cut of his clients’ earnings. But over the course of her working relationship with Reynolds, Lux claims that the agent persistently charged her fees, leaving her thousands of dollars in debt, and then “used that debt as a means to control her while exploiting her,” according to a cease and desist letter from Lux’s lawyer to the agent’s attorney. The actress submitted several invoices as evidence, documenting thousands of dollars in fees from Reynolds. When the actress later sought work elsewhere, the cease and desist letter says, Reynolds allegedly attempted to “blacklist” her from the industry.

In a statement to The Daily Beast, Reynolds wrote that “Hussie Models LLC is Licensed and Bonded in the State of California and we do not take commission in the state of FL.” He declined to comment on Lux’s other allegations, but one week after Lux filed her complaint, the talent agent wrote a lengthy Facebook post addressing his frustrations with the adult entertainment world. “I have met the biggest pussies and pieces of shit from being in this industry,” he wrote, “and if I could ever be locked in a room with them, the horrible & disgusting things I would do to them. I would go straight to hell.......and I would without hesitation. I dream of it all the time. Screenshot this bitches.”

Lux’s accusations are not isolated complaints. Reynolds has a checkered criminal background. A public records request from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office reveals the agent accrued at least eighteen criminal charges between 2007 and 2012, including multiple counts of criminal mischief, burglary of an unoccupied structure, and grand theft. Other models have made similar claims of exploitation. In two police reports obtained by The Daily Beast, former actors alleged the agent had stolen from or deceived them, both going as far as to accuse Reynolds of trafficking—a charge defined by Florida state law as the use of “force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of sexual exploitation”—although none of the other models pressed charges.

Lux is the first of Reynolds’ models to take him to court. According to Professor Tamara Rice Lave, a criminal law professor at the University of Miami School of Law, if the civil suit draws the attention of prosecutors, the talent agent could see criminal charges. “If he didn’t have a license and he still acted as an agent,” Rice said, “then it’s pretty straightforward that he broke the law.” Adult entertainment lawyer Brandon Kolb, who represents Lux in her civil suit, added that in the case of criminal prosecution, Reynolds could easily face multiple counts, extending the maximum sentence beyond five years. “Each [shoot] could be a separate count. Or each girl that he booked could be a separate count,” Kolb said. “When I think about it that way, I don’t know if I could count that high.”

Lenna Lux first made contact with Reynolds just after her 18th birthday in late 2017, while she was still living in her home state of Colorado. There’s a scene in Hot Girls Wanted where Reynolds places an advertisement on Craigslist, promising “free flights to Miami,” and it was one of these offers that Lux first saw and reached out to redeem. Reynolds told Lux that he would pay for her airfare, provide lodgings for her during her stay, and secure her work as an adult actress that would make her a “substantial amount of money,” according to the complaint filed with Pinellas County Circuit Court.

Not long after they spoke, Lux flew to Florida. In January of 2018, she signed a two-year contract with Hussie Models, promising the agency exclusive authority to book jobs for her and 15 percent of her earnings as commission. But almost immediately, Lux says she began incurring costs she had not anticipated.

The actress soon discovered her trip to Florida was not “free” as it had been advertised, but to be deducted from the money she made from shoots. Lux also learned she was responsible for paying $40 per day in order to reside in one of Reynolds’ “model houses,” alongside several other girls. She was required to undergo regular STD screening through a company called Talent Testing Services and had to reimburse Hussie Models for the $155 fee. Lux had to pay for travel to and from her gigs, including airfare and lodging for a work trip to California. On top of that, she often bankrolled her own hair, makeup and clothing.

The fees might not have seemed so unreasonable, Kolb told The Daily Beast, if the agency had booked her enough jobs to offset the costs. But Lux claims Reynolds arranged no more than nine shoots for her over the course of several months, each paying between $600 and $1100. According to invoices submitted as evidence, Lux never saw a dime from four of these shoots—Reynolds held her entire cut. By April of 2018, after four months of working with Hussie Models, Lux owed her employer money instead of the other way around.

According to the complaint, Reynolds contacted Lux that month and insisted she settle her accounts. When Lux told him she could not pay, the agent offered her $200 in credit, if she would accept a job with his own production enterprise, Hussie Auditions. But even with the credit, Lux soon received an invoice for her debts which, by that point, had reached $891.64. On April 4, 2018, the complaint states, Lux tried to quit.

But she could not quit. Reynolds told Lux she could not end her contract without his consent, and that, as the complaint puts it, “he was not consenting to such termination.” Still, the adult actress needed more jobs to repay her debts, and was not finding opportunities with Hussie Models. Instead, she joined the roster of an agency called 101 Modeling and resumed work—until Reynolds contacted the agency, insisting they remove the actress from their website and forfeit all of Lux’s pay to his company. After Lux handed over her booking fee, the company cancelled her shoot. Reynolds then provided her with an invoice citing $2,610 in debts, including $1,500 in fees to cover the cost of her “contract termination.” Between the two invoices, Reynolds sought a combined total of $3,525.11 from Lux, even though the actress had not made much more than that from the few shoots he had booked her.

“ Reynolds did apply for a Talent Agency License in 2016, but his application was denied due to his ‘alleged criminal record indicating moral turpitude and/or dishonest dealings.’ ”

But in her lawsuit, Lux alleges the agent never had the right to demand money of her in the first place, because he had lied about his credentials.

On its website, Hussie Models bills itself as “a licensed and bonded adult talent agency,” but according to the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, Reynolds has never been licensed in the state of Florida. Reynolds did apply for a Talent Agency License in 2016, but his application was denied due to his “alleged criminal record indicating moral turpitude and/or dishonest dealings,” according to his Florida DBPR court file. Reynolds appealed the decision in early 2018, just after he signed Lux to Hussie Models. But on March 15, 2018, FDBPR issued a Final Order on his application, rejecting his appeal. In a statement to The Daily Beast, a FDBPR spokesperson said Reynolds had “failed to establish proof of good moral character or rehabilitation.”

Just 20 days later, according to the complaint, Lux attempted to leave Hussie Models. But if the court sides with Lux, she would not have needed to break her contract at all—it would have never been valid.

Lux’s allegations echo the cases made by three former models to Florida police in 2015 and 2017. In the first report, a Pennsylvania woman, whom The Daily Beast will not identify due to the sensitive nature of her allegations, contacted the North Miami Beach Police Department with a complaint concerning Reynolds.

According to police records, the woman reached out to Reynolds in late 2014 upon finding one of his advertisements, promising “free” transit to Florida and housing in one of the agent’s model homes. Shortly after, right around Thanksgiving, she flew down to Florida and joined the roster of Hussie Models. But the actress soon became alarmed. According to her statement to police, Reynolds then told the actress he would manage her money—confiscating her Social Security card, birth certificate, Pennsylvania I.D. card and all the cash she brought. Later in her statement, the woman claimed she was only allowed to leave the premises when escorted by one of Reynolds’ employees. Many of her roommates in the model home, the actress noted in her report and in an interview with The Daily Beast, seemed to lean on an excessive use of alcohol and illegal drugs.

Over the course of the following weeks, the performer engaged in several shoots on behalf of Hussie Models, some of which, she told the police, “she didn’t want to do.” But when she expressed discomfort, the actress alleged, Reynolds “stated that [she] had nowhere to go, and that she would be kicked out of the house if she didn’t perform on camera.”

On one of these occasions, the woman told The Daily Beast, she had wanted to cancel a shoot due to illness, a request which made Reynolds “very, very upset.” Reynolds appeared with a small medicine cup filled with blue liquid, which he told the performer was Mucinex. “It did not smell like Mucinex. It smelled like alcohol. So I said no, I don’t want to take that,” she said. “But he grabbed me by the throat and dumped this liquid down my throat, and it made me cough, and choke and throw up a little.”

The actress left Florida shortly after. But like Lux, she clashed with Reynolds over money. During the course of her stay, which lasted approximately one month, the actress alleged that Reynolds held onto her money as her “personal bank,” according to her police statement. When she did finally retrieve her identification cards and cash, the actress told The Daily Beast that Reynolds had taken “more than half” of what she’d made, leaving her with only a few hundred dollars—not even enough to buy a flight back to Pennsylvania. “I was left without a penny,” she said. “I had to work to cover my plane ticket back home. He wouldn’t pay for it, even though he took all of my money.”

A second report, filed in May of 2017, shows that two more models reported Reynolds for fraud. In a statement delivered to the Coral Springs Police Department, an adult actor who declined to comment for this article stated that he and his girlfriend had flown to Florida from New Jersey in order to work for Hussie Models. Upon arrival in January of that year, the couple moved into one of Reynolds’ model homes in Margate, Florida. According to the police report, they immediately “discovered a pistol and ammunition on the kitchen counter.” The officer notes that because Reynolds is a convicted felon, possession of these weapons would have been illegal.

After a few days of work, the actor told the police that Reynolds had reported him and his girlfriend to local authorities, alleging that the couple had stolen $5,000 from his company. In his statement to Coral Springs police, the actor, who denies the theft, said Riley used the report to rope the couple into a “sex trafficking scheme,” stating that they were “in debt to him” and that “any work they did would be used to pay off their debt.” He told the officer that he and his girlfriend “fear[ed] for their lives” due to Reynolds’ “ample use of narcotics” and repeated threats “about dumping their bodies in a lake.” When the couple fled back to New Jersey, neither party pressed charges.

Allegations against Riley Reynolds and Hussie Models have been informally documented by the adult industry blog Mike South for years. The website has published dozens of posts on Reynolds, including an anonymous interview with a former model who recounts a story much like the others—a “free” flight which she later had to work off, confiscated identification cards and cash, exorbitant booking fees—but with a darker deception. “He asked if I was okay with light nudity and I said sure,” the model told Mike South. “But I didn’t realize he meant at the time full on porn. I wasn’t okay with that.”

But of the many anonymous accounts against Riley online, Lux’s lawsuit is the first formal action a model has taken against the agent. If she wins, he could see several more. “She’s young and she is very sure of herself,” Kolb told The Daily Beast. “She’s not letting anyone take advantage of her.”