We informed our readers about the vile practice of ‘grooming’, which we defined as the process of developed dependence in order to lead someone into sex trafficking.
We argued that the sex pimping sites like Backpage, and even far less popular sites like Tony Ortega’s regrettable basement blog, incorporate a lot of these same tactics in order to generate a learned helplessness that makes them easy targets for pimps, online predators, and other Internet lowlifes.
Following our recent post exposing Tony Ortega’s servile defense of Backpage we’ve been getting all kinds of questions about public outrage at the time. As always here at the blog, we’re here to help.
As one angry reader of the Village Voice, Strider01, observed in the wake of Tony Ortega’s truly idiotic ‘arguments’:
That [the Village Voice] thinks its readers will overlook this implies a disrespect for the intelligence of any one who can see how much Village Voice Media has to benefit (in term of its bottom line!
By any reasonable accounting this has been a very bad year for James Larkin and Michael Lacey, the former _capi di tutti i capi_of the Backpage family — the largest online advertiser child sex trafficking the world had ever seen.
Despite the perfectly transparent attempts by the likes of Tony Ortega to deflect attention from their sordid enterprise and attack critics who dared to raise their voices in protest we have seen how, if anything, the furor has only increased as Backpage’s day in court draws closer.
The other day we told you about the alarming parallel that seems to exist between recent stories of Backpage’s sexual exploitation of young women for financial gain going viral and the exploits of real life criminals in charge. Tony Ortega’s sham coverup, shilling for this soulless corporation is connecting with readers and needs investigating.
For example, in our recent story of Lawrence Ray, prosecuting authorities explained he extorted approximately $1 million from five victims.
The other day we were first to break the story to our readers of a pending tv series based on an article about Backpage which went viral. Today we received news of a similar type story – another damning article dealing with the underage sex trafficking mill and the human vermin like Tony Ortega who worked to normalize it. It too, went viral. Instead of getting a series order from a high profile production company, however, this one led to an arrest so sordid and dark it could be a David Fincher film.
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.
“ 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.
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.
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.
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.
Questions have been pouring into the blog recently about updates to the court case against the owners of Backpage, James Larkin and Michael Lacey, set for next spring. We here do our best to bring you all the late breaking news around the illegal sex trafficking scheme Tony Ortega long shilled for, knowing full well countless children were daily being victimized to advance Backpage’s bottom line.
Recently, those of us eager to see Ortega and his bosses brought to justice received a welcomed bit of good news when the trial judge in the Lacey and Larkin case ruled that the First Amendment does not shieldthe corrupt newspapermen behind the operation from prosecution for their former ownership of Backpage despite their furtive attempts to muddy the waters by unloading the toxic company as federal authorities began zeroing in their illicit conspiracy.
By the time James Larkin and Michael Lacey, the infamous child pimp runners of the Village Voice, finally kicked Tony Ortega to the curb it was already too late. The damage had been done and the bulk of their crimes were soon become a matter of public record.
One might be tempted to think that Tony Ortega dodged a bullet by getting fired from the Backpage’s illicit sex empire before the Feds shut it down, disappearing into the anonymity of an obscure suburban life.
It all happened back when Ortega found himself subpoenaed to testify after he attempted to smear a man named Bruce McMahan in a hit-piece story for the Village Voice entitled “Memo to Bruce McMahan”. In classic Tony Ortega style, the ‘story’ was replete with half-truths, manufactured stories and outright lies. It was this ham-fisted attempt at written defamation which found him once more embroiled in another ethics scandal, the kind which seem to follow him around like flies after a garbage truck.
“Congress hauled in Craigslist on September 15, 2010. There, feminists, religious zealots, the well-intentioned, law enforcement, and social-service bureaucrats pilloried the online classified business for peddling “100,000 to 300,000” underage prostitutes annually. Those same numbers had already inspired terrified politicians, who let loose hundreds of millions of dollars in the past decade to prohibitionists bent on ending the world’s oldest profession. The Craigslist beat-down was absurdist theater. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security hearing on “Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking” culminated with the humbled attorneys from Craigslist announcing that they would close down their adult classified business.
