Tony Ortega Backpage Apologist
The more we read about Tony Ortega, the more urgent we feel about authorities stepping in to do something. We felt this way when we first learned about the crackpot theories he was peddling to trashy alt publications.
And while we don’t wish to underplay the seriousness of Tony Ortega’s famously toxic relationship with telling the truth – as we’ve been seeing over the years – it’s the company Ortega keeps that has us wondering if it isn’t time for law enforcement to do something about it.
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.
The people of Texas have spoken and spoken loudly. Tony Ortega and his kind are no longer welcome in their communities. Dallas may have once been the national headquarters for Backpage, the illicit website Tony Ortega proudly shilled for, but my how things have changed in the past few years!
Amateur “hack journalist” and professional sell-out Tony Ortega once sang Backpage’s praises from coast to coast, trying to gloss over the inescapable fact that women and underage girls were daily being sold for sex.
The United States saw the passage of Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA and Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), a bill that held websites criminally responsible for facilitating all forms of illegal sex trafficking, and which shuttered a host of platforms used by pimps and prostitutes alike to advertise their sexual services. Since that time, the law has had a huge impact on sex traffickers profit margins, not to mention the “social acceptance” of their shady business.
If you buy the lies Tony Ortega has advanced during his stint as the mouth piece for the human sex trafficking website Backpage, odds are you are under the delusion that prostitution is merely an economic choice or a victimless crime.
To listen to Tony Ortega you’d think being trafficked for the sex trade was an exercise of your constitutionally protected rights as an American. In reality, however, it’s all a glossy cover for something far deeper and darker.
The clock is counting down to what some are calling the trial of the century, namely the federal case against Backpage pimp kingpins Michael Lacey and James Larkin, et al.
Slated to begin in the summer of 2021, speculation is running rampant as to just how much jail time these kingpins will find themselves facing when all is said and done.
One question we have been wondering here at the blog is, in addition to substantial jail time whether or not the judge will also mete out meaningful financial recompense for the many victims harmed by the actions and attitudes of the Backpage sex trafficking empire.
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.
It’s been a tumultuous week here in the United States, with all signs pointing the fact that there are still many surprises to come in the days and weeks ahead.
It’s within this context that we share with you excerpts from the following article unexpectedly shared with us overnight by a reader of this blog who advocates on behalf of sex-trafficking victims.
Originally posted on the CNN website in June of 2012, the opinion piece —written almost 6 years(!
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.
Over the course of this week, we’ve been watching how the events over the course of a single day in October of 2016 would be the death knell for Backpage, signaling the end of its rampant under-age sex trafficking empire and the shameless cocoon of lies Tony Ortega spun in their defense.
Now that fateful Thursday was drawing to a close and the curtain was about to fall on the entire Backpage pimping syndicate.
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.
In what is to surely be felt as yet another blow to the pimps of the Backpage empire —and their spineless toadies like Tony Ortega – the U.S. District Judge Susan Brnovich who will be presiding at trial, announced she will not be stepping away from the criminal case charging Backpage executives with facilitating prostitution.
As we’ve previously reported, attorneys for James Larkin, who along with Michael Lacey previously ran the alternative weekly Phoenix New Times and Backpage child sex trafficking website, filed a motion in September demanding Brnovich recuse herself because of official statements decrying sex trafficking made by her husband, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich.
By any measurement 2020 has been a year filled with disasters. From the out-of-control forest faires in the western half of the United States to the raging fires of anti-religious hatred fueled by those like Tony Ortega.
And, let’s be honest here, in many ways Tony Ortega is to tolerance online what a lit cigarette intentionally thrown from a car is to field of tall dry grass. After all, the hoped-for results of both are usually the same — to burn it all to the ground.
In an interview with a popular women’s magazine, an actress explained how she has been working as an undercover FBI agent fighting against child sex trafficking on sites like Backpage.
During her time undercover the star participated in half a dozen child-sex stings around the world as an unpaid volunteer.
She explained her involvement to help the FBI fight child sex traffickers like Backpage by saying that good people are the only ones who will do anything about it.
Poetic Justice for Sex Trafficking Profiteers
Backpage, the human sex trafficking website Tony Ortega worked so hard to legitimate and normalize, may be gone but its dark reverberations are still felt in communities everywhere.
That said, it’s not often that good news comes out of the sickening world of sex trafficking, where tens of thousands of children and young women are sold for sex each night across the country. So when we here at the blog find news worth celebrating, we share it with you.
For all our discussion of the tremendous damage the child-sex selling web site Backpage which Tony Ortega staunchly defended and even bragged about, ours was hardly the only country ravaged by its lustful greed. Over the weekend an overseas reader sent in a reminder that his country, Australia, was also ruthlessly victimized by the mob-like business model Ortega promoted.
These are the facts Tony Ortega won’t ever tell you.
Official records show hundreds of Australian women were tricked, coerced and otherwise threateningly pressured into selling themselves via paid advertisements on one of the many international portals connected to the Backpage website.
Tony Ortega
It’s no secret that Tony Ortega lives to attack people online. Not all people, of course, as evidenced by his strange preoccupation with actively defending and excusing the behavior of known child predators.
Today we uncover yet another example of this clearly worrying fascination with defending those who would sexually abuse children.
Early in his career, long before his pathological obsession with a religion, Tony Ortega was listlessly casting about for ‘easy marks’ upon whom he might vent his impotent rage.
Recently we wrote a piece in which we called Tony Ortega ‘radioactive’ for this habitual lack of professionalism and his penchant for bald face lying in the face of contradictory reality.
Our recent blog posts about Ortega’s dubious history as a writer for cheap tabloids prompted one reader of this blog to recall yet another offensive piece which Ortega had published years ago.
First, however, we offer you a little context calling your attention to what has been a very disturbing trend on YouTube and other social media platforms in which so-called ‘content creators’ engage in wildly dangerous, irresponsible pranks in order to attract an audience.
