Tony Ortega Backpage apologist
We started these past few days discussing the blatant criminality that was running amok throughout the culture of Backpage (and the attempted cover-up from their chief apologist, Tony Ortega), noting how they’d been getting away scot-free with their sex trafficking scheme until Payment processing companies like Visa and Mastercard began closing their doors to them.
Similarly, some banks closed accounts that were held by Backpage (or Backpage-related entities) out of concern the accounts were being used for illegal purposes.
Tony Ortega Backpage apologist
Recently some of our readers have asked if the Backpage Sex Trafficking conspiracy truly involved as many underage minors as mainstream media outlets have been reporting. Some have wondered why, if this was as widespread as is being reported, hadn’t they heard about it until now.
The answer to this question is simple — propaganda. This is why Backpage employed unsavory and unethical operators like Tony Ortega.
Recently we here at the blog told you about the attempt made by Backpage to have the judge overseeing their upcoming child sex trafficking trial removed. Needless to say, the desperate gambit did not work out so well for the Backpage defendants.
Today we are back with more good news for our readers about the upcoming trial. After months of back and forth it has now been finally decided upon that yet another Backpage-enable must stand face trial on state and federal sex-trafficking facilitation charges.
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!
Today we are taking a quick moment to update our readers about some of the more recent events surrounding the upcoming trial of the key players in the Backpage sex trafficking syndicate.
Only days ago a federal appeals court on rejected a request by the former operators of Backpage, James Larkin and Michael Lacey, to prevent a judge from presiding over their trial because of statements made by the judge’s husband, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, about the now-shuttered classified ad site.
In our last post we began an examination of the money laundering scheme used by Backpage in an attempt to ‘clean’ the vast amounts of money they had been raking from the pimps and child sex traffickers who had been using their services for years.
By late 2013 the Backpage brand — despite Tony Ortega’s incessant lies to the contrary — was increasingly being recognized to be little more than a front for massive criminal sex trafficking.
Tony Ortega Backpage Apologist
Over the course of this week we’ve seen first hand how Backpage systematically abused its victims and squeezed them for every dollar they could. While we shared with our readers a number of true life stories of a select few of these children and young women, it is worth remembering that this was but a small glimpse into the vast number of girls whose lives were ruined by Backpage.
Tony Ortega
In our previous article we asked the very important question Tony Ortega seems never to have taken a moment to consider – we asked if the victims of the Backpage crime-spree were worth the cost. For years Tony Ortega pounded his fist on the table and demanded that Backpage be allowed to sexually exploit underage children and marginalized women without ever seeming to take seriously the devastation the organization paying his salary was so obviously responsible for.
Tony Ortega
In our last post we were looking at a number of victims of the Backpage human sex trafficking scheme which hypocritical blowhards like Tony Ortega long championed as defenders of free speech.
And yet, as we have seen, the sort of ‘free speech’ Tony Ortega’s Backpage cronies trafficked in came at a devastating cost for its victims
Sometime in or around the summer of 2012, a young girl referred to in the indictment of the Backpage crime family as “Victim 6” was sold for sex, through the use of Backpage ads, in Arizona.
Tony Ortega
This week we are going to shift gears just a little bit. In our examination of the official timeline of the rise of Backpage as laid forth in the State’s charging document, we’ve been focusing on the business side of the Backpage tragedy.
It is worth noting, however, that the indictment itself devotes an entire section to the detailing a sampling of victim summaries, some of which we felt might be beneficial to look at today.
Tony Ortega
Recently we read about Backpage’s clandestine strategy to use the Philippines as a testing ground to develop new overseas markets for their human sex trafficking scam.
We saw how it was the heads of Backpage accomplished this, using a controversial strategy of hijacking information from the other websites to create competing sex trafficking ads on Backpage. It was a process the company internally referred to as “preboarding”.
On August 7, 2014, Dan Hyer sent an email stating that an organization based in the Philippines, referred to in court documents as ‘Company B’, was “ an efficient and cost effective way for us to bring new users to backpage.
It’s no secret that in addition to facilitating illegal prostitution and child sex trafficking through its U.S. website, Backpage has also facilitated similar crimes through its websites in foreign countries. Perhaps even more disturbingly, court documents show that within this context, Backpage would often actively generate the content of the illegal prostitution and underage sex trafficking ads being published itself.
Consider the following facts underscored in the State’s official indictment against Backpage:
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.
Tony Ortega Backpage Apologist
On September 11, 2013, a Backpage representative made a presentation to the Arizona Governor’s Task Force on Human Trafficking. Following this presentation (which took place in Phoenix), the representative was asked whether there would be any “ cons” to requiring verifiable identification of all escorts being advertised on Backpage’s website. In response, the representative did not identify any financial or logistical hurdles to the adoption of such a requirement.
Tony Ortega
Tony Ortega might have tried to sell Backpage to the public as a glorified dating site but the reality, as we’ve been seeing over the course of our investigation into the legal filings, was something far more nefarious.
The plain, undeniable truth is that they were selling women and children to perverts online for profit. Backpage watchers had long been sounding alarm bells about the criminal implications of its business model, now some on Backpage payroll were beginning to speak out in corroboration.
Carl Ferrer
Recently we wrote about a series of emails exchanged by Carl Ferrer and a woman described in court documents only as “P.R.” As illustrative as their carelessness recounted in our last post was, Backpage and its heartless attitude toward its victims didn’t stop there. And neither did the story of “P.R.”
On July 14, 2012, Carl Ferrer received another email from the same woman.
It stated: “ Would you please take the edit block off my ad.
Through our examination into Backpage’s fruitless and ultimately vain attempts to shirk the laws in their greed-driven crime spree to generate hundreds of millions in personal profit through the highly illegal human sex trafficking trade, we’ve come across what we believe to be evidence more than sufficient to prove the state’s case against its ringleaders.
Take for example, the example Backpage set it its early years. Between around September 2010 and October 2012, Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer became aware that a particular Backpage customer, known as “P.
