Sex Trafficking

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.

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 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 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.

Making the case that Backpage knew full well it was in the business of sex trafficking just gets easier by the day. On the off chance, however, our readers are not yet convinced, consider this in-house document circulated amongst Backpage’s moderators on July 30, 2015, entitled “ trainingJuly2015“. This training manual specifically told moderators that, if they saw a photograph depicting “ a person [who] looks young/minor,” they should “ approve don’t delete the ad unless it has a banned term.

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.

Tony Ortega Backpage’s deliberate attempt to feign ignorance concerning the wide range of sex crimes they were actively facilitating on their website is by this point, no longer up for debate for anyone willing to look at the evidence. For those, however, who still may be on the fence about Backpage’s criminal negligence consider this episode from April 27, 2012 when a woman wrote an email to Backpage’s support department stating that her underage daughter had been kidnapped, drugged, and was being advertised as a prostitute against her will.

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 Back when Tony Ortega was shooting off his mouth in praise of Backpage, one of his favorite lies seems to have been what we’ve come to know as the ‘myth of Backpage self-moderation. Tony Ortega falsely claimed that Backpage took ‘proactive’ steps to root out instances of illicit prostitution and child sex trafficking. The reality is nothing could have been further from the truth. Throughout the course of our ongoing investigation here at the blog, we have come to the conclusion that the corporate heads of the Backpage organization and their complicit co-conspirators like Tony Ortega had full knowledge that there so-called ‘moderation’ was only a publicity stunt designed to provide political cover against the growing concerns many Americans and their elected leaders were beginning to raise about the legitimacy of the Backpage business model.

Some things are just so blindingly obvious it makes you wonder why they’re not constantly in the headlines of every major paper in the nation. Happily, this hasn’t been the case for Backpage scandal, which was and remains, very much in the headlines across the country. And yet there are elements of what many view as the “Backpage criminal conspiracy” which are just as shocking as the human trafficking and sex-for-cash scheme launched by Michael Lacey and James Larkin.

Tony Ortega As we’ve been going over recently released court documents surrounding the coming Backpage trail a clear pattern is emerging. Contrary to all the lies Tony Ortega was busy selling to the public, Backpage had full knowledge of what they were doing and were actively engaged in a massive company-wide cover-up. For example, on February 16, 2011, Andrew Padilla sent a separate email discussing whether several terms should remain on Backpage’s “filtered terms” list.

As we continue our examination of court documents recently obtained concerning the upcoming trial of James Larkin and Michael Lacey, the criminal masterminds federal prosecutors are convinced spearheaded the Backpage human sex trafficking scheme, the evidence of their clear and willful lawbreaking becomes increasingly hard to explain away. We doubt even Backpage’s most infamous lapdog propagandist, Tony Ortega, could spin a web of lies to cover over the facts we’re discovering as we pour over these documents.

Andrew Padilla On January 13, 2011, Dan Hyer and Andrew Padilla received an email summarizing instructions that had been provided to members of Backpage’s technical staff. It explained that the technical staff had been instructed “ not to display the moderation log” in a particular section of Backpage’s database. You may find yourself wondering why a business as innocent as Tony Ortega tried to make us all believe it was would send such a message to its staff?

Tony Ortega If you’ve ever wondered just how much effort Backpage put into its ‘performative compliance with the law’ when it came to the thorough ‘self moderation’ Tony Ortega assured us all was taking place, wonder no more. Court documents reveal that on September 1, 2010, Andrew Padilla sent an email to Dan Heyer and Carl Ferrer stating that customers who engaged in “extreme and repeat” violations of Backpage’s posting rules would have their ads deleted and be banned from the website.

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.