Unravelling The Backpage
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.
12:50 PM
It was now 12:50 and Tony Ortega, like the rest of America, was just learning that authorities in Texas were holding a press conference to discuss details of the warrant they’d served only hours before. Most people across the nation must have been shocked when authorities announced Backpage was receiving more than 90 percent of its revenue from the sex trafficking ad portion of its classified advertising business.
Tony Ortega, however, would not have been among them. As Editor-At-Large running the Village Voice, from which Backpage was a spin-off, Ortega would have been well aware where the money he was being paid was coming from. After all — as we have noted previously — this is why he was such a vocal proponent of the scheme, writing editorials decrying any criticism aimed at the underage sex cabal that was paying his salary.
The warrant spelled out clearly for all that Ferrer “ was regularly copied on the hundreds of law enforcement subpoenas and requests that Backpage.com received each year related to prostitution and sex trafficking of both adults and minors on the website.”
Ferrer, like Ortega, knew exactly what sort of crimes Backpage had been involved in. And, like Ortega, he knew how bad things were about to get.
2:45 p.m.
Two hours later, the wife of then Arizona U.S. Sen. John McCain, Cindy McCain, makes a public appearance addressing the arrest of Ferrer which she calls a “huge game-changer” in the effort to crack down on the sex trafficking of underage girls and boys.
She had been leading efforts for several years to fight human trafficking and had repeatedly called out Backpage for allowing the advertising of minors for sex.
She expressed her gratitude to California and Texas authorities who charged Backpage CEO for his pimping charges and the newest charge of money laundering which had just been made official.
As co-chair of the Arizona Human Trafficking Council, Cindy McCain worked nationally and internationally on efforts to stop sex trafficking. So she was speaking from a position of some authority when she observed, that Backpage was given every chance early on to “ _do the right thing early on_” but chose not to.
Tony Ortega had every opportunity to do the right thing early on, too. Instead he chose to continue deceiving the country in order to line his pockets.
At this point Ortega’s lies, however, could no longer avail Backpage. Their sex trafficking scheme was unraveling fast and as they would soon learn there was nowhere they could hide.