The shutdown of the adult section on Backpage.com, one of the biggest classified ads sites in the world, sent shockwaves through the seedy world of online human sex trafficking across the globe only a few short years ago.
In the wake of the this uncommonly prescient move by federal authorities, many with guilty consciouses were sent running for the hills. Some, like Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer tried to run. He, however, was soon arrested in Houston after landing on a flight from Amsterdam and nailed on a warrant which charged him with pimping children and other counts of fraudulent criminal behavior.
As far as we know Tony Ortega is not a registered sex offender but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t share a many of the same attributes the pimps and sex-peddlers he vociferously and viciously advocated on behalf of during his shameful tenure as Editor-in-Chief of the Village Voice.
Maybe that’s why today’s story in particular reminded us so much of Tony Ortega. It deals with a man from Long Island who locked women in a “sex dungeon” in his parents’ basement.
No, the above headline isn’t in reference to Tony Ortega (though you could be forgiven for thinking so, given his history of faking identities online and helping to coverup sex trafficking crimes.)
This story involves an entirely different scumbag charged with human trafficking and the online promotion of underage sex workers. While Tony Ortega could certainly be credibly accused of the latter, as of the writing of this blog post no official charges have been filed identifying him as a human trafficker under U.
Recently we started taking a look at the birth of the Backpage scheme.When last we left off Tony Ortega (as has so often been the case for this clown) was in over his head. The paper he was hired to keep afloat was going under. Fast.
The free alt weekly garbage paper, The Village Voice was losing money at precipitous rate. Water cooler chat around the Voice offices were about imminent layoffs, the inevitability of bankruptcy, and the stunning stupidity of whoever installed Tony Ortega to help ‘rescue’ company.
“I helped turn a weekly newspaper with a website into a digital enterprise.” – Tony Ortega
The above quote came from Tony Ortega while, with his typical braggadocios self-importance, hw was spouting off to the New York Times on just what an important player he was in the empire Backpage built.
With all the legal scrutiny which has fallen on those associated with the infamous child sex selling operation it’s little wonder that Tony Ortega has tamped down the full-throated praise he used to offer to anyone foolish enough to ask his opinion on the topic.
We’ve been taking a look lately at precisely how executives and paid hatchet men like Tony Ortega who worked at the Village Voice and Phoenix New Times actively engaged in gaslighting any and all who stepped forward voicing concern about the countless child victims being trafficked year after year on Backpage.
Tony Ortega and the other tools of the men in power tried to smear all who called them out on their sex-peddling scheme as “religious zealots”, religious nuts”, “politically motivated” or “greedy for funding from Congress”.
“We’re being told that there’s a widespread, growing and out-of-control problem to fear in our country. And it has a catchy name: ‘trafficking. The actual data behind this ‘epidemic’ is wanting in the extreme. It involves guesses by activist professors, junk science by nonprofit groups trying to extract money from Congress…” – Tony Ortega
We can think of a great number of people who disagree with Tony Ortega on the above quote which represents just one of his numerous propagandistic untruths on the subject.
It’s been a turbulent few months for Tony Ortega’s former Backpage Bosses, James Larkin and Michael Lacey.
As court battle losses for Backpage and its malfeasance continue to mount before ‘the bosses’ own much anticipated trial, we can now add one more notable blow undermining Tony Ortega’s paper-thin defense of the whole Backpage criminal empire.
This week a Brooklyn man became the last of 19 people convicted for their roles in sex trafficking girls and young women in the state child welfare system, which included several girls from a residential treatment center.
“ I really just want people to understand that nobody, unless they’ve lived this life, can honestly fathom the amount of pain and trauma that comes from Backpage. I suffer every day because of the things that happened to me years ago.”
The above quote comes from a woman Melanie Thompson who says she was exploited for years starting at age 12 by a sex trafficker who used what Tony Ortega once routinely referred to as a bastion of First Amendment Rights, Backpage.
Readers of this blog will need no reminding that Backpage was seized by the US Justice Department in April of 2018. It was then that Carl Ferrer flipped on his associates and pleaded guilty to conspiracy and money laundering, agreeing to cooperate with the ongoing federal investigation.
Readers will also remember that Jim Larkin and Michael Lacey both pleaded not guilty and are scheduled for trial in Arizona later this spring.
“Harvey Weinstein is on trial. Jeffery Epstein is no longer with us,” she said. “Dr. Larry Nassar is in prison and on one is selling children on Backpage.com. I know we as a community have done what we needed to do but I know there is more to do.”
These were the words Kathleen Winn, executive director of the sexual exploitation-fighting Project 25/ VAST, spoke to an assembly recently in Arizona to combat the threat of child sex trafficking the men behind Backpage inflicted upon the country before the syndicate was raided by authorities in 2018.
It’s interesting sometimes to note how with the trial against the crime syndicate that ran Backpage once more in the headlines, other folks have started refocusing their examination of the problem as well. Take for example the Justice Department, which just held a “summit” on Tuesday of this week, where officials touted convictions of a record 526 defendants in trafficking cases including Backpage.com.
While we’ve celebrated ourselves here on the blog the government’s having taken down the infamous sex ring Tony Ortega brazenly shilled for during his tenure as its chief propagandist, we know only too well that more needs to be done to curtail the global practice of sex trafficking.
It wasn’t that long ago that Backpage.com was considered something akin to the Walmart or Amazon of the sex industry, where people could find thousands of sex services listed on the classified ad website.
Previously we’ve told the story of how the site rocketed to popularity in 2010, around the time when Craigslist shut down its adult services section. When that happened, Backpage became the go-to for pervy creeps everywhere. (Any wonder a specimen like Tony Ortega would become the site’s most outspoken pitchman?
Checking back in on the ongoing nightmare caused by the child sex traffickers at Backpage. This of course, is the same organization Tony Ortega would routinely shill for, often attacking the very victims and their advocates.
Only months ago, infamous sex trafficker Jeffery Epstein made news after he was re-arrested and awaiting trial when he commit suicide. Though that particular news story doesn’t directly relate to the hateful work Tony Ortega endorsed as chief propagandist for Backpage, it has nonetheless re-introduced the topic to people across the country.
As if we needed more proof that known liar and child sex trade propagandist Tony Ortega has blood on his hands for the role he played in helping prop up Backpage in its billion dollar operation selling children for sex to online perverts, this the recent story which broke earlier in December is a chilling reminder.
On June 5, 2018, Chrystul Kizer fired two bullets into the brain of serial sex abuser Randy Volar.
Online industries have been in a lot of hot water lately: hate speech, financial scams, undermined elections and — thanks to sites like Backpage — sex trafficking.
Up to now tech companies have largely avoided legal consequences, owing to a landmark 1996 law which protects them from lawsuits.
Today that federal law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, finds itself facing a brand new threat: Annie McAdams, a personal-injury lawyer in Houston.
To put it simply, the aftermath of the world’s largest child-sex ring, Backpage, has been ugly. While some of the online pimps Tony Ortega once defended as ‘expressing their First Amendment rights’ have been brought to justice for illegally trafficking exploited women and underage girls, many remain at large.
The wake of Backpage’s demise left a lot of information for investigators, however. Much of this information has come in the form of the personal stories related to authorities by the surviving victims of Backpage.
The rise and fall of the Village Voice reads like a Greek tragedy. Having long been a stalwart of strong writing and interesting points of view, it went from being an American icon to a national disgrace in a matter of a few short weeks following Tony Ortega being installed as Editor-in-Chief. It was around this time that New Times Media became “Village Voice Media,” and the Sith lords at its helm, James Larkin and Michael Lacy, felt they had free reign to exploit the seamiest possible underbelly of American media: online prostitution, and, in particular, the underage sex trade market.
By this point there are few brazen enough to argue away the corrupting influence Backpage had on every element of society it touched — from the marginalized who were its victims to the online predators from all walks of life who took advantage of the despicable illegal sex trade platform. Tony Ortega is about the only one we could think of with that unique mix of arrogance, ignorance and lack of any discernible ethical system who might take up the challenge but as we have previously noted Tony Ortega remains strangely silent on the topic he once fought so hard to defend.
The spotlight we’ve been focusing on the final days of Tony Ortega at the Village Voice has brought a lot of shady business to light. With the benefit of 20⁄20 vision the reckless criminality of Backpage and the cavalcade of villains like Tony Ortega it gave rise to, are only too obvious today. But all of this got us wondering what people were saying about the events surrounding Backpage as they were unfolding.
