In a recent blog post we examined the issue of what good Tony Ortega has brought into the world through his work. The answer is, not surprisingly: not much. There have been, however, consequences from his role supporting Backpage. On Monday of this week Dr. Joseph P. Campbell Jr. presented on the use of technology in detecting human trafficking at the Alexander F. Carson lecture series hosted by A.O. Fox Hospital in New York.

Ortega has always sucked up to his bosses. From his early days as a hack journalist to his present incarnation as unemployed hack Twitterer, time has not changed Tony Ortega all that much. At heart he is still the same disingenuous blowhard, content to ignore the human tragedy of child sex trafficking so long as someone was willing to pay him for it. In those final days of Backpage’s reign as the the world’s most reported-on sex scandal, Ortega would routinely go after reporters.

There is an old joke about a history professor who would attempt to show his students the good in every historic event they studied. One day a particularly provocative pupil attempted to stump the professor by raising his hand and asking, “What about Adolf Hitler?” The professor paused a moment and said, “Well there is one commendable thing to say about him, in those last days trapped in his bunker with the Allied forces closing in…”

This week’s case involving Backpage boss, Michael Lacey, and his prima donna request to have his ankle monitor removed in advance of his latest Hawaiian vacation highlights and underlines both the narcissism and lack of remorse the accused in this case have displayed at every turn. While it is always distressing to see the moral depravity of Tony Ortega’s former colleagues, such examples of conduct can serve to remind us of the mentality behind the schemer’s Tony Ortega himself once praised as the guys ‘smart enough to create Backpage’.

Tony Ortega Backpage Apologist This past week we hinted at new evidence in the strange case of debauched Backpage impresario Michael Lacey’s request to a federal judge to have his ankle monitor removed to accommodate his upcoming Hawaiian vacation. To more fully explain this, it’s helpful to take a look back at the turn of events which lead to Backpage becoming largest platform ever devised for the sexual trafficking of human beings.

We’ve talked a lot about Tony Ortega and the role he played giving political cover to the human trafficking website Backpage. We’ve looked at the prostitution, the rape, the murder and the child exploitation made possible by those who helped and supported Backpage over the years. Now yet another horror story has emerged showing just how disgusting Backpage (and the people behind it) truly is. This week a Maryland man was arrested by authorities for knowingly passing HIV to four women who he met on Backpage.

In a recent article we discussed how little, in fact, Tony Ortega has changed over the years. He has always been motivated by greed and pride. And he has always been an obsessive troll. And it’s the subject of his obsessive nature that should be a major red flag to anyone who might be tempted to think of Tony Ortega was ever anything like a journalist, by anyone’s standard. When Ortega was finally forced out of his cushy role as Editor-At-Large for The Village Voice, a former staffer at the _Voice_complained to the New York Observer that “[Ortega] was increasingly obsessed with Scientology and had neglected almost all of his editorial duties at the paper.

Earlier this week we reported that Dan Hyer, the sales and marketing director of Backpage.com plead guilty in Arizona federal court to conspiring to facilitate prostitution. He is the second Backpage executive to plead guilty so far, with at least another six others slated to go to trial in early 2020. Recently we’ve been asked here for a quick recap of what brought us to where we are in this case.

In the lead up to the coming trial of Tony Ortega’s former bosses the rising myriad of convictions must be giving team Tony Ortega no shortage of sleepless nights. In addition to the convictions we mentioned in our last report, another has just come across our desk. This time it’s a Wisconsin man who prosecutors say transported seven young women across state lines and forced them into prostitution using ads on Backpage.

As convictions begin to mount we are here to keep you up to date on the latest developments of the Backpage scandal Tony Ortega has been so curiously quiet about since the subpoenas first started rolling out. Today we got word of a July 29th sentencing date being set for the sales and marketing director of Backpage.com, following his earlier guilty plea of conspiring to facilitate prostitution in yet another of Backpage’s seemingly endless schemes.

We have said from the beginning that many convictions would result from the criminal enterprise once known as Backpage. This week we witness the start of that justice. On April 10, 2019, one man from Claymont, Delaware and two from Wilmington were convicted of trafficking minors for sex via Backpage.com throughout Pennsylvania and Delaware. Dkyle Jamal Bridges, a 33-year-old from Claymont, and two Wilmington men, Kristian Jones, 25, and Anthony Jones, 35, were found guilty of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion with adults and minors, and sex trafficking three minors by force, fraud or coercion.

Recently we’ve been taking a look at the nefarious, often turbulent, tenure of one Tony Ortega during the dying months of the Village Voice. We saw how under Ortega’s leadership, The Village Voice’s circulation dropped from 240,265 to 213,358 in the space of a year. That’s a crushing 11% drop… and it was only the beginning. We saw how Ortega, now overseeing a giant publishing boondoggle, was having a decidedly difficult time finding an audience willing to read his free give-away paper.

Obstruction of justice is a phrase we’re hearing a lot in the news today. But it doesn’t just have to do with presidential politics. Obstruction of justice can take many forms. Like that time when Tony Ortega’s sleazy Backpage bosses, Michael Lacey and James Larkin, sold the Village Voice. They split the sale, removing from the offer the Backpage sex ad site. This of course was the paper’s goose that laid the golden eggs.

“Backpage exists solely so that people can freely express themselves—sometimes in ways that make other people uncomfortable. We’re First Amendment extremists that way. Always have been.” So begins one of Tony Ortega’s many ardent defenses for his sex peddling bosses at the Backpage. “First Amendment extremist”, what is that phrase even meant to convey if not a brotherhood of narrow-minded, radicalism he shares with his fellow ‘extremists’ everywhere.

Tony Ortega In our article “Tony Ortega’s Village Voice: A Backpage Front” we drew your attention to the grand scheme behind The Village Voice and Backpage, specifically how they were from the beginning planned to be separated in order to fully concentrate on the mega profits produced by Backpage in its lust to sell young women for sexual services. It bears repeating, however, that this came as no surprise to Tony Ortega who from the beginning was in on the scam.

“Seven years ago, the people I [Tony Ortega] work for were smart enough to start Backpage.com, a competitor to Craigslist. While other newspapers were doing little more than publicly condemning Newmark for the way Craigslist has, for years, eaten into their classified ads revenue, we decided to fight back. That’s just how we operate.” – (The people Tony Ortega worked for were Michael Lacey and James Larkin). “Backpage.com has since inherited some of the adult business that left Craigslist.

It might be tempting for some to think that the deluge of justifiable outrage over the Backpage underage sex trafficking scandal is somehow a recent phenomenon. It is not. For years voices of everyday citizens have clamored against the infamous crime syndicate and its lapdog, Tony Ortega. Even close to a decade ago, we knew and understood the seriousness of the crimes these scumbags were engaged in profiting from.

Sometimes people surprise you. You can know someone your whole lifetime and still learn new and fascinating aspects of their personality. This certainly not the case with a guy like Tony Ortega. For as long as we have been covering him we feel we can honestly say the only thing surprising about him is how utterly predictable he is. Longtime readers will need no further reminding that his decades long obsession with Scientology has ultimately been nothing more than a means of trying to get his audience riled up, fanning the flames of bigotry and hate so that he can make fast buck selling the rage he’s fomented right back to them.

We recently reported that fifty women are suing Salesforce, alleging the company profited by helping Backpage to engage in sex trafficking. Too long the story of Tony Ortega’s bosses and their worldwide human trafficking ring has lingered in the shadows, on the periphery of other news stories favored by the mainstream media. Today we are happy to report this appears to be changing, as NBC news picked up the Salesforce story and has been bringing it to national attention.

In Greek mythology the Hydra was a many headed monster that guarded the entrance to the underworld. Part of what made this beast so terrifying was that whenever one of its heads was cut off, another two would grow in its place. While the Hydra was never more than a myth, the Backpage was a chilling reality. And just like the multi-headed beast at the mouth of hell, Backpage is proving how hard it is to kill.