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.
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!
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:
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
Recently we saw how Backpage turned a blind eye to a woman who had contacted them to report that one of the “escorts” depicted in their online ads was only 17 years old. Despite the fact that the woman had informed them that the juvenile had been attempting to recruit the complaining party’s daughter, who was only 15 years old.
Over these past few weeks we’ve been building the case that instances like this were not one time mistakes.
Tony Ortega
We’ve learned a lot so far over the course of our examination into the continued duplicity Backpage was engaged in as Tony Ortega took to the pages of the Village Voice in a vain attempt to spin public sentiment in favor of his sex trafficking bosses.
One of the things we’ve been noticing in the official court documents however, is exactly how brazen the Backpage conspiracists were in all this.
Andrew Padilla
On April 5, 2011, Andrew Padilla sent an email whose recipients included Joye Vaught and the supervisor of Backpage’s Indian moderation team. True to Backpage’s abysmal moderation standards the email was entitled “relaxed image standards”. It included, as an attachment, a document that displayed a series of 30 nude and partially-nude photographs. Next to each picture was an instruction as to whether it should be approved or disapproved by a moderator.
On October 27, 2010, Dan Hyer sent an internal email stating that Backpage was “editing 70 to 80%” of the ads it received from customers. In other words, through Hyer, Backpage’s Sales and Marketing Director, the company directly acknowledged that a large proportion of the ads originally submitted by Backpage’s own customers contained text and pictures that were indicative of prostitution and that Backpage was still choosing to publish those ads after editing them.
Carl Ferrer, Michael Lacey and James Larkin
By 2008, if not earlier, Michal Lacey and James Larkin were aware that the overwhelming majority of the website’s “adult” ads involved prostitution. Nevertheless, they made a financial decision to continue displaying those ads.
The Backpage and its underlings also sought to sanitize the ads by editing them — that is, by removing terms and pictures that were particularly indicative of prostitution and then publishing a revised version of the ad.
Tony Ortega
Last week a copy of the recently unsealed Grand Jury indictment found its way to our desks here at the blog. As we make our way through the document this week, we will be sharing with our readers a number of the more spectacular highlights which, as we’ve seen so far, are making a very damning case against Backpage.
So far we seen how many of the ads published on Backpage depicted children who were victims of sex trafficking.
If it is own thing we all know about the slimy executives of the Backpage sex trafficking syndicate, it is this: they will use every dirty, underhanded trick in the book to slither off the hook.
Maybe it’s a trick they learned from their pitchman, Tony Ortega. One thing is certain, however, this past week they were up to their old tricks again.
We all know the former Backpage executives Michael Lacey and James Larkin, together with their squad of already-indicted unethical employees stand accused of facilitating prostitution.
When Craigslist closed its “adult” section, Backpage became the go-to online spot for illegal sex listings. Its presence grew to be ubiquitous across the United States, making it the target of numerous law enforcement and attorneys general.
Despite Tony Ortega’s whining to contrary.
Despite his list of deceptive excuses as long as your arm.
Despite the loss of revenue to his friends, measured in the hundreds of millions.
Like all clear-thinking, compassionate citizens we hope to curtail the practice of underage sex trafficking and coercive sex slavery.
Today we return to the in-depth look we’ve been taking a look at a telling editorial published by CNN in the early days of Backpage, some six years before the sex trafficking platform’s federally-enforced shutdown.
We say ‘telling’ because it is simply remarkable to look back at contemporary reporting at the time Backpage began its rise and see that from the beginning, Tony Ortega’s shady work to help obscure Backpage’s true objective: to profit from the victimization of underage children by selling them to be sexually exploited by perverts online.
In our last blog post we took a look back on the events of a single day four years ago which marked the beginning of the end for Backpage and the dime-store hype-men like Tony Ortega, paid to keep the public in the dark about the sex trafficking scheme they were running.
Zero hour began at first light on Oct 6 with the arrest of the Backpage Chief Executive Officer Carl Ferrer on a slew of felony charges from pimping minors to conspiracy.
Four years ago this month, way back in October of 2016, the wheels of justice began to turn for the pimps, sex traffickers and shameless conmen apologists behind the largest child sex ring this country has ever seen — Backpage.
In honor of this four year anniversary we thought today we might take a look back at the timeline that saw the beginning of the end for the criminals that for too long cheated the system, abused countless victims, and profited from the pain they caused to the tune of half a billion dollars.
It was not yet noon on October 6th 2016 when we last we looked in on the unraveling of Backpage. Its CEO, Carl Ferrer had been arrested. Backpage corporate offices in Texas and California were being scoured for evidence of sex trafficking, and officials were hauling it out by the box-load.
To say it was a bad day for Tony Ortega’s bosses would be the understatement of year. And, as we alluded to in our article recently, by the end of the day things would be even worse.
The April 2018 press release that was issued by the Department of Justice regarding Backpage.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Backpage’s Co-founder and CEO, As Well As Several Backpage-Related Corporate Entities, Enter Guilty Pleas Earlier this week, the Justice Department announced the seizure of Backpage . com, the Internet’s leading forum for prostitution ads, including ads depicting the prostitution of children, and the unsealing of a 93-count federal indictment against seven Backpage principals.
Recently we reported to you the strange turn of events which lead to both the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security joining the fight against Backpage, almost a year after the monstrous syndicate was seized and shuttered by federal authorities.
New information out today suggests that both the DOJ and DHS are casting a wide net and implicating many foreign-based sites trying to exploit the same loopholes in American law that Tony Ortega’s pals who ran Backpage once did.
