Tony Ortega
Thus far in our exploration of the official court documents surrounding the pending Backpage human sex trafficking trial we have found nothing to support to false pretense made by Tony Ortega and his fellow conspirators on the Backpage payroll that knew nothing about what was going on.
On the contrary, it seems the exact opposite is true.
In fact, the charging document itself attests to the fact that Dan Hyer, Anderw PADILLA, and other Backpage defendants periodically received a “Google alert” when articles discussing Backpage appeared in the news.
Tony Ortega Backpage Apologist
Beginning in or around January 2016, Backpage’s moderators were instructed to stop removing ads that contained the phrase “ GFE”, short for ‘Girl Friend Experience’. For example, on January 28, 2016, Assistant Operations Manager Joye Vaught was sent an email from a Backpage moderator explaining that “ As far as I am aware we are no longer removing ads for GFE.“
Similarly, on March 9, 2016, a Backpage moderator sent an email to his coworkers explaining that “ Andrew [Padilla ] and I talked about the GFE thing, going forward we will not be removing ads for GFE” and clarifying “ this includes even gfe with price.
It’s no secret Backpage flaunted local, state, and federal laws at every turn. Despite multiple pleas to cease and desist which the Backpage sex trafficking operation received from child advocacy groups and continued warnings from police departments across the country, the shadowy organization nonetheless persisted in its wanton abuses.
Court records show that on October 7, 2015, Backpage’s Manager of Operations, Andrew Padilla, received an email from another Backpage employee (which was later forwarded to Joye Vaught) disclosing that there were “ massive numbers of live ads with banned terms and pictures out on the site.
Andrew Padilla
On April 24, 2014, Joye Vaught sent an email to Backpage’s moderators (while cc’ing Andrew Padilla). In this email, Vaught explained that if a moderator came across an ad containing a link to a a “ sex for money” website, the moderator should add the link to a list of banned terms but “ don’t bother removing it from the current ad.” And that’s about as explicit an admission of guilt as there is.
