Backpage Grand Jury Indictment: “Do Not Acknowledge The Prostitution”

This past week, for the first time in a public foru, we began to unpack and analyze the text of the official Grand Jury indictment of Backpage. We started by looking at the key players named in the complaint. Today, we turn our attention to the specific charges levied against these Backpage defendants.

The charging document explains in detail how Lacey, Larkin et al. utilized a variety of strategies to make it appear that the prostitution ads appearing on Backpage are actually ads for “escort” services, “adult” companionship, dating, or other lawful activities.

In one example the indictment demonstrates how Backpage purported to ban customers from offering illegal services by periodically used computerized filters and human “moderators” to edit the wording of (or block) ads that explicitly offered sexual services in return for money.

In fact, prosecutors claim, these strategies were nothing more than a fiction designed to conceal the true nature of Backpage’s ads and customers.

Tony Ortega

Our readers will remember this was the lie Tony Ortega was trying to sell.

Court documents now reveal, however, that the Backpage defendants admitted —in internal company documents and during private meetings — that they knew full well from the beginning that the overwhelming majority of the website’s ads involved prostitution.

Prosecutors allege that in at least one internal document, Lacey actually bragged about the company’s contributions to the prostitution industry saying:

“Backpage is part of the solution. Eliminating adult advertising will in no way eliminate or even reduce the incidence of prostitution in this country… For the very first time, the oldest profession in the world has transparency, record keeping and safeguards.”

Notwithstanding these private admissions, these charges demonstrate how the Backpage defendants took pains to mislead the public, regulators, and law enforcement officials concerning the supposed sincerity of Backpage’s efforts to prevent the publication of prostitution-related ads.

Though unnamed in this first round of indictments, we saw how Tony Ortega was a part of that effort. New documents reveal that the true extent of the deception runs even deeper than Ortega’s participation, however.

For example, after reviewing Lacey’s written description of Backpage’s contributions to the prostitution industry and editing practices, Larkin instructed his underlings to prevent “ _any of the information in this being made public._”

Backpage’s Operations Manager, Andrew Padilla, even went so far as to threaten to fire any employee who acknowledged in writing that the “escorts” depicted in the website’s ads were actually prostitutes.

The charging document itself quotes Padilla as saying: “Leaving notes implying that we’re aware of prostitution . .. is enough to lose your job over. ”

Another internal document went further still, describing Backpage’s media strategy in terms of the stark command: “Do not acknowledge the prostitution.”