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.
Tony Ortega
We’ve written a lot here on the blog about the article Tony Ortega published in the Village Voice attempting to smear New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof after his in-depth exposé the Backpage sex trafficking syndicate. Like many media watchers we don’t hold a very high opinion of Tony Ortega’s so-called ‘reporting’ and we hold an even lower opinion of his ethical standards.
But sometimes the most damning indictments don’t come from outside observers, they come from your own readers.
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In our last installment we began to make the case that Tony Ortega’s role as Editor-At-Large at the Village Voice made him the final word on what was published in that paper concerning the defense of Backpage. As we concluded then, the words he published he bears responsibility for, whether he was the original author or not.
It seems that Tony Ortega’s readership agreed with us, as was evidenced by the outrage in the form of angry letters addressed to Ortega after he had the gall to publish an unhinged attack on Nicholas Kristof.
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.
As we here at the blog were first to anticipate earlier this week, the initial shockwaves surrounding the recent lawsuit filed against Twitter for not removing sexually explicit content depicting a minor are suddenly beginning to be felt within the legal world.
Call it the lesson no one learned from Backpage, namely: that corporate media companies — no matter who they are — must be held accountable for illicit content posted on their platforms.
Tony Ortega
More information following our reporting on the developing bombshell Twitter child sex trafficking case we first told our readers about yesterday.
Indeed, the more we learn about the particulars of this case the clearer and more alarming we see the criminal pattern between the exploitation of minors on the Twitter platform and what was done to victimize the underage youth during Tony Ortega’s deceitful tenure as craven outspoken mouthpiece for the corporate pimps of Backpage.
Tony Ortega
Last week a federal lawsuit was filed against social media giant Twitter which carries with it potentially seismic repercussions for platforms promoting sex trafficking (such as Backpage) and those who would publicly advocate on their behalf (such as notorious Backpage shill Tony Ortega).
The suit, filed Wednesday on behalf of a teenager, claims that the company waited for days to remove sexually graphic videos of himself and another minor posted to its platform by sex traffickers.
One day in and the new year is already starting off with a bang. Here at the blog we’ve long been sounding the alarm bells over the conduct of sex trafficking apologists like Tony Ortega. One of the major concerns we had about the way Tony conducted himself with such brazen hypocrisy during his tenure at the Village Voice was the degree to which he was actively working to destroy the lives of the countless children being exploited by his Backpage owners.
In terms of bad press for Backpage, it has been nothing short of a disaster. In addition to the two separate child sex trafficking rape cases, this past week, a third case made the news.
On Wednesday, 26yr old Trevien Thomas of Fresno, California pleaded guilty to driving a 14-year-old girl from Dallas and forcing her to into prostitution for days in Houston.
The accused pimp entered his plea by video conference because of the COVID-19 pandemic, telling Senior U.
In what many are calling the biggest judgement against a Backpage pimp to date, this Monday brought news that East Texas man who trafficked children and adults during an “eight-year reign of terror” in North Houston was ordered to serve a life sentence in federal prison and pay nearly $1 million in restitution to multiple victims.
Read that again — a lifetime sentence and one million dollars in restitutions.
David Mearis, 45, was convicted by a federal jury in October 2019 of forcing several girls into prostitution and grooming teen victims into adulthood so he could peddle them online for profit using Backpage.
Back at the end of October we raised the then controversial proposition that landlords should begin using their positions to deny rental privileges to those who engage in or promote human trafficking .
At that time we even, somewhat jokingly, suggested in our piece that this might be a compelling argument for Tony’s wife to consider, seeing as her deadbeat husband Tony Ortega was guilty of being a unrepentant spokesman for the underage sex trafficking factory — Backpage.
Tony Ortega
Over the past few posts we’ve been considering the consequences for victims of human sex trafficking, particularly as it impacts its younger victims. The callousness of Backpage execs and its depraved cheerleader, Tony Ortega, in the face of the vast amount of human suffering they are personally responsible cannot be overstated.
As we explained, while Backpage may be dismantled the harmful, long-lasting effects of the sort of human trafficking Tony Ortega tried to convince was nothing more than a ‘radical expression of First Amendment rights’, continue to do harm.
Tony Ortega Backpage Apologist
Yesterday we suggested that Tony Ortega, and his fellow band of henchmen, are long overdue to receive comeuppance for their misdeeds for aiding and abetting Backpage during the horrific run of its illicit human sex trafficking crime spree.
We reported to you how a federal grand jury issued yet another judgement against one of the same pimps Tony Ortega told us we were all “hysterically worrying’ worrying over.
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 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.
There’s no shortage of bizarre stories surrounding Backpage (and we’re not just talking about the wholly fictional pro-Backpage propaganda Tony Ortega routinely pumped like raw sewage into the town aquifer.)
Today’s story is one of the stranger ones we’ve yet seen out of this ever-expanding Backpage sex syndicate scandal.
This week, sex trafficker Charles White was sentenced to 10 years in prison for trafficking two young women out of his home in Harlem, NY, which he’d dubbed “The White House”.
