Barrage of Charges Facing Leaders of Backpage Crime Syndicate

Yesterday we reported to our readers that the former heads of the Backpage human sex trafficking empire, Michael Lacey and James Larkin, had failed in their attempt to have the presiding judge of their forth coming trial booted from the case.

Lacey and Larkin reportedly felt the judge hadn’t been ruling in their favor. Funny how that seems to happen to those who choose a life of unrepentant crime. (Tony Ortega would be wise to take note!)

Authorities said the former website’s operators are accused of ignoring warnings to stop running prostitution ads and that the site brought in more than half a billion in prostitution and child sex trafficking-related revenue.

Prosecutors, however, alleged the Backpage site gave free ads to sex traffickers and cultivated arrangements with others who worked in the sex trade to get them to post ads with the company. Some of the site’s operators also are accused of laundering money earned from ad sales after banks raised concerns that they were being used for illegal purposes.

For their part, the former Backpage operators continue in their stubborn refusal to admit the truth. Instead, the Backpage defendants maintain their site would never have allowed ads for sex and used people and automated tools to try to delete such ads. It is of course, merely the latest iteration of the famous lie pushed by Tony Ortega as word of Backpage’s illegal sex trade scheme began to trickle out to the public.

In all, six former Backpage operators have pleaded not guilty to charges of facilitating prostitution. Of the six, Lacey, Larkin and two others have pleaded not guilty to money laundering charges.

The site’s marketing director has already pleaded guilty to conspiring to facilitate prostitution and acknowledged he participated in a scheme to give free ads to prostitutes to win over their business.

Additionally, the company’s chief executive, Carl Ferrer, pleaded guilty to a separate federal conspiracy case in Arizona and to state money laundering charges in California.

While prosecutors say the site published many ads that depicted children who were victims of sex trafficking, at the time of this writing no one in the federal case in Arizona is charged with sex trafficking or child sex trafficking.

Tony Ortega Backpage apologist

We join our readers in hoping that as new evidence continues to come to light, new charges may be filed. These new charges may even see some new names facing depositions. Tony Ortega better check to make sure he doesn’t make any plans to skip town any time soon.