It seems like every time we check the news here, the horror story known as Backpage and the cadre of ghouls who continue to support them despite the fact that the truth of their intentions is daily coming into sharper focus.
As we all know by now, this year started off with the long awaited raid by federal authorities this year, effectively shuttering the sex trafficking section of their operation.
As the notorious website Backpage was under fire by legislators and the public over alleged prostitution ads linked by critics to sex trafficking of minors, San Francisco software titan Salesforce stepped in to save the site and help it grow, a new lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit filed by 50 “Jane Does” alleges:
“Salesforce knew the scourge of sex trafficking because it sought publicity for trying to stop it… But at the same time, this publicly traded company was, in actuality, among the vilest of rogue companies, concerned only with their bottom line.
This week we’ve been looking at the enduring legacy of destruction in the wake of the only underage sex peddling platform personally endorsed by Tony Ortega.
We saw how the murder in Atlanta ties directly back to Backpage’s thinly veiled revamp of its prostitution platform, rebranded now as ‘adult dating’. But the problem continues to spread across state lines.
As criminals benefit from technology in communication, wide distribution and anonymity, law enforcement agencies find themselves using the same platforms to stop those illegal revenues and gather evidence.
Even though federal authorities have long since raided and shuttered the world’s largest online prostitution syndicate run by Tony Ortega’s former bosses, new reporting suggests Backpage.com is still a marketplace for prostitution in places like metro Atlanta, according to a Channel 2 Action News investigation earlier this week.
Way back when prostitution first migrated from streets to smart phones, both Craigslist and Backpage were under pressure to stop online adult advertising, this new bombshell report explains.
It’s that time again! Time for your Backpage Sex Peddling trial update, brought to you by Tony Ortega and his criminally indicted bosses.
This week, we heard the first words Backpage.com co-founder and Tony Ortega’s former boss, Michael Lacey, offered about allegations he faces for running a prostitution ring and shady money laundering operation.
“Nonsense!” was all he said before his attorney added that his client had no further comment. Nonsense, as if to imply that all the lives he and the people who worked for him ruined and left discarded behind them were nothing but a joke to him.
Frequent readers of this blog will know by now the sordid unprofessional history of Tony Ortega. Between 2011 and July 2012, Tony Ortega, then Editor-in-Chief of the Village Voice, launched a biased oppo-research campaign on organizations and individuals who attempted to report on sex trafficking in the United States.
Clearly Ortega was tasked by his employers, James Larking and Michael Lacey, to do damage control against the numerous accusations being levied against Backpage.
Any attempt to understand Tony Ortega’s strange obsession with defending the truly indefensible sex-for-cash prostitution ring prosecutors for the federal government have hauled them in to court to answer for, must begin with a survey of Ortega’s own quotes on the matter. On June 29, 2011, Ortega wrote:
“ Backpage.com has since inherited some of the adult business that left Craigslist…We’ve spent millions of dollars putting in place strict policies and monitoring services to make sure that it is only adults finding each other through Backpage.
When Tony Ortega was dismissed from The Village Voice in September 2012, The New York Observer disclosed that he lost his job as Editor-in-Chief for neglecting his duties in favor of his personal daily rants against Scientology. It got so bad that one staffer at the Voice complained, “He was increasingly obsessed with Scientology and had neglected almost all of his editorial duties at the paper. Sometimes he wouldn’t even edit features.
Maybe it’s not so hard to believe that it’s already been 6 years since Tony Ortega was let go as the editor of The Village Voice. Since that time it’s been an on-going saga of continuous unemployment, desperate boot-licking in Hollywood, and a lackluster (to say the least) foray into the narcissistic world of self-publishing.
Suffice it to say, Tony Ortega will most likely be out of the running for the ‘Most Industrious Man of the Decade’ award this time around.
This last month was designated by the White House as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, dedicating the month to raising national awareness of the issue of human trafficking and highlighting efforts to combat this violent crime and those who would enable and endorse such practices.
There’s no mistake that last year saw a decided series of devastating blows to human trafficking in general and Tony Ortega’s former employer, backpage.
People have been talking a lot lately about Tony Ortega and his infamous defense of the Backpage, since the story is once again making headlines as the federal government moves ahead with its case against the people behind it.
Tony Ortega asserts that the classified section was never a platform for selling sex, but a new report from law enforcement is clearly demonstrating this to be yet another of his lies.
Repercussions from the recent pressure being put on Backpage and its conspiratorial enablers like Tony Ortega continue to be felt across the country.
Just this week in Florida, a woman was sentenced to life in prison for prostituting a 14-year-old female runaway by setting the girl up in a motel room and creating a profile for the child on backpage.com.
The woman in question, 35 year old Katilia Brekeysha Seymour, was convicted of human trafficking following her arrest more than two years ago in Pinellas County.
The role Tony Ortega played (and continues to play by remaining silent) supporting the notorious Backpage website is no secret to frequent readers of this blog, but the seismic ripple effect in the wake of the Federal raid which seized more than 12 million dollars from those associated with the underage sex-for-hire platform is something few could have predicted.
This week it was announced that human trafficking has become such a danger in California that it will be now be part of the curriculum at seven local school districts when then San Diego County District Attorney’s Office made public it will spend $3 million to fund The San Diego Trafficking Prevention Collective to provide education about human trafficking to more than 237,000 students.
Previously on this blog, we covered the massive bombshell story detailing how Tony Ortega’s former bosses just had their bank accounts seized to the tune of more than 10 million dollars.
Today another intriguing development in the story.
The sentencing of the former CEO of Backpage.com, the infamous website knowingly used for the purposes of underage prostitution, has been pushed to July 18 from its original January date. The move to delay formally throwing the book at Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer, who originally pitched the executives of the New Times tabloid chain (which employed Tony Ortega at the time) on the idea of an online prostitution advertising website, came at the request of the federal government.
It’s no secret these past few years have been a terrible run for the Tony Ortega brand (such as it is) what with entering into his umpteenth consecutive year of deadbeat unemployment, the blow Twitter’s new algorithm struck against his army of fake sock puppet supporters presumably purchased from shady off-shore bot farms, and the chorus of criticism he has been receiving from his very own blog posters calling him out for mistreating his so-called ‘sources’.
Schadenfreude is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of others.
It’s a complex negative emotion. Rather than feeling sympathy towards someone’s misfortune, schadenfreude evokes joyful feelings that take pleasure from watching harm come to someone. While research suggests his emotion is displayed more in children than adults, some adults also experience schadenfreude, they are just usually better at concealing their expressions.
Why are folks over on Tony Ortega’s blog suddenly calling him a low class drama queen? I mean, it’s not like they are wrong but seeing these comments popping up on Tony Ortega’s hate blog got us thinking. Have Tony’ Ortega’s readers finally had enough of his unfiltered, immature garbage?
Apparently it all started when a longtime “fan” of his announced that he was fed up with the way Tony Ortega runs his operation.
Tony Ortega’s former boss, Michael Lacey, who stands accused of using the shuttered Backpage website to profit from human trafficking and prostitution is out on a $1 million bail bond. Apparently he is so conflicted about his role as heading the largest online brothel in the world that he’s decided to take a fun-filled trip to Hawaii to really give him a chance to work on his tan (and presumably whatever remorse his shriveled heart is capable of feeling having ruined so many lives.
We ended our post yesterday noting how both Tony Ortega and his atheist, activist wife, Arielle Silverstein, are known liars. While being identified as a source of ‘bad faith’ information might not even register in atheist community, being a liar and calling yourself a journalist is and remains an unforgivable sin.
Not only does Tony Ortega often fabricate from whole cloth the “facts” he reports, he also insidiously inserts his own views into his reporting.
