Backpage Sex Trafficking

Tony Ortega One of the major themes we’ve been looking at recently is the extent to which Backpage and the various accessories to its multiple crimes, like Tony Ortega, intentionally chose to ignore the red flags Backpage’s illicit activities were raising. We noted yesterday that the lack of willingness by of many of these individuals — like Tony Ortega, his accomplices and others around him — to speak honestly about these issues is truly disturbing, especially in light of the litany of examples of the conspiracy of silence Backpage was engaged in.

Some things are just so blindingly obvious it makes you wonder why they’re not constantly in the headlines of every major paper in the nation. Happily, this hasn’t been the case for Backpage scandal, which was and remains, very much in the headlines across the country. And yet there are elements of what many view as the “Backpage criminal conspiracy” which are just as shocking as the human trafficking and sex-for-cash scheme launched by Michael Lacey and James Larkin.

Andrew Padilla On April 5, 2011, Andrew Padilla sent an email whose recipients included Joye Vaught and the supervisor of Backpage’s Indian moderation team. True to Backpage’s abysmal moderation standards the email was entitled “relaxed image standards”. It included, as an attachment, a document that displayed a series of 30 nude and partially-nude photographs. Next to each picture was an instruction as to whether it should be approved or disapproved by a moderator.

Tony Ortega As we’ve been going over recently released court documents surrounding the coming Backpage trail a clear pattern is emerging. Contrary to all the lies Tony Ortega was busy selling to the public, Backpage had full knowledge of what they were doing and were actively engaged in a massive company-wide cover-up. For example, on February 16, 2011, Andrew Padilla sent a separate email discussing whether several terms should remain on Backpage’s “filtered terms” list.

As we continue our examination of court documents recently obtained concerning the upcoming trial of James Larkin and Michael Lacey, the criminal masterminds federal prosecutors are convinced spearheaded the Backpage human sex trafficking scheme, the evidence of their clear and willful lawbreaking becomes increasingly hard to explain away. We doubt even Backpage’s most infamous lapdog propagandist, Tony Ortega, could spin a web of lies to cover over the facts we’re discovering as we pour over these documents.

Andrew Padilla On January 13, 2011, Dan Hyer and Andrew Padilla received an email summarizing instructions that had been provided to members of Backpage’s technical staff. It explained that the technical staff had been instructed “ _not to display the moderation log_” in a particular section of Backpage’s database. You may find yourself wondering why a business as innocent as Tony Ortega tried to make us all believe it was would send such a message to its staff?

On October 27, 2010, Dan Hyer sent an internal email stating that Backpage was “editing 70 to 80%” of the ads it received from customers. In other words, through Hyer, Backpage’s Sales and Marketing Director, the company directly acknowledged that a large proportion of the ads originally submitted by Backpage’s own customers contained text and pictures that were indicative of prostitution and that Backpage was still choosing to publish those ads after editing them.

Andrew Padilla On October 16, 2010, Andrew Padilla sent an email to a large group of Backpage employees (including Dan Hyer and Joe Vaught). The email had two attachments that provided guidance on how to “moderate” ads. The first was a Powerpoint presentation that displayed a series of 38 nude and partially-nude photographs, some of which depicted graphic sex acts. Next to each picture was an instruction as to whether it should be approved or disapproved by a Backpage moderator.

Tony Ortega If you’ve ever wondered just how much effort Backpage put into its ‘performative compliance with the law’ when it came to the thorough ‘self moderation’ Tony Ortega assured us all was taking place, wonder no more. Court documents reveal that on September 1, 2010, Andrew Padilla sent an email to Dan Heyer and Carl Ferrer stating that customers who engaged in “extreme and repeat” violations of Backpage’s posting rules would have their ads deleted and be banned from the website.

Carl Ferrer, Michael Lacey and James Larkin By 2008, if not earlier, Michal Lacey and James Larkin were aware that the overwhelming majority of the website’s “adult” ads involved prostitution. Nevertheless, they made a financial decision to continue displaying those ads. The Backpage and its underlings also sought to sanitize the ads by editing them — that is, by removing terms and pictures that were particularly indicative of prostitution and then publishing a revised version of the ad.

In our last post we saw how the origins of the Backpage scheme were born out of the perceived threat to Village Voice Media’s business model made by Craigslist, which had just launched a ‘free classified ads’ section to their website. In response to this potential economic threat, Michael Lacey, James Larkin and Carl Ferrer created the entity known as Backpage In 2010, however, Craiglist chose to shut down its “adult” section due to the prevalence of ads for prostitution and other illegal services.

Tony Ortega at the New Times Michael Lacey and James Larkin are the founders of the Phoenix New Times, an alternative newspaper based in Arizona. It was here they came to know Tony Ortega, the man who was to become their public mouthpiece, corporate lapdog, and most bullish defender of their self described “right” to sell women and underage girls for sex via their online platform. But how did these two cyber pimps come to control Backpage, the notorious online brothel at the center of the largest human trafficking bust ever made by authorities?

Tony Ortega Last week a copy of the recently unsealed Grand Jury indictment found its way to our desks here at the blog. As we make our way through the document this week, we will be sharing with our readers a number of the more spectacular highlights which, as we’ve seen so far, are making a very damning case against Backpage. So far we seen how many of the ads published on Backpage depicted children who were victims of sex trafficking.

This past week, for the first time in a public foru, we began to unpack and analyze the text of the official Grand Jury indictment of Backpage. We started by looking at the key players named in the complaint. Today, we turn our attention to the specific charges levied against these Backpage defendants. The charging document explains in detail how Lacey, Larkin et al. utilized a variety of strategies to make it appear that the prostitution ads appearing on Backpage are actually ads for “escort” services, “adult” companionship, dating, or other lawful activities.

Big news for readers of the blog who are concerned by the ongoing scandal surrounding Backpage and those who knowingly and willingly conspired with them. Last week we obtained a copy of the previously sealed, and as yet unpublished, Grand Jury charges in the case of the United States of America v. Michael Lacey, James Larkin et al. And, over the next days, we’ll be here to take our readers through the actual federal charges, every step of the way.

In our last post we reported to you about recent news out of San Diego of yet another Backpage pimp standing trial for the part he played in trafficking underage children via the online sex slavery platform devised and created by Tony Ortega’s former bosses. Though it’s been nearly four years since the crimes committed by Jonathan Madison — the pimp at the heart of our last post — justice has finally caught up to him.

Tony Ortega As the court date set to decide the fates of Tony Ortega’s Backpage bosses draws closer, Backpage-related sex trafficking cases continue to pile up. With the benefit of hindsight it is now beyond all doubt to right minded people that Tony Ortega was outright lying as he worked to downplay the severity of the human trafficking problem in America and obscure the roll his employers played in profiting from it.

Tony Ortega During its time in operation, there were few who would argue Backpage was anything other than a den of rampant criminality and lawlessness on a scale the country had never seen before. Indeed, among its more infamous crimes were well documented histories of sex slavery, child trafficking, and murder — much of which we have examined at here on the blog. By virtue of Backpage’s practically non-existent screening process — the same one Tony Ortega assured us was made up of “hundreds of staff” dedicated to keeping juveniles off the site — criminal behavior like this was made possible.

Just when you think the seemingly endless legacy of filth Backpage has produced over the years couldn’t possibly get any more grotesque, a story like today’s pops up in the headlines. Tony Ortega As with so many stories that seem to circle the spectacularly corrupt orbit of Tony Ortega, this one started with a with an unscrupulous operator who used his position to victimize others much in the way Tony, ever the opportunistic hustler, built his so-called career — using and abusing others for his own gain.

The abundance of evidence pointing toward Backpage as a hotbed for criminality ranging from sexual child abuse to murder is at this point — now almost 3 years since federal authorities raided and shuttered the organization —beyond contradiction. Tony Ortega Not that you’d ever hear such an admission from Tony Ortega, who operated largely in secret at the behest of the highest echelons of Backpage boardroom executives to push the fraudulent idea that the corporation was doing all it could to keep its platform free from such crime.