Backpage leaders will be sentenced after testifying to the founder of the site on the site’s sexual ads
Phoenix – Two former managers of the site classified now closed backpage.com should be condemned Tuesday in Phoenix for conspiracy to facilitate prostitution by selling sexual advertisements.
A prosecutor recommended five years of probation and restitution payments for former CEO Carl Ferrer and sales director Dan Hyer, who both pleaded guilty of conspiracy in 2018. The prosecutor said that the two men had recognized their crimes and cooperated with the authorities by testifying against a founder of the company during the trial in 2023.
The founder of Backpage, Michael Lacey, was found guilty of a single indictment of money laundering of international concealment and sentenced to five years in prison and sentenced to a fine of $ 3 million, although he remains free while he is pursuing a call. Financial director John Brunst and executive vice-president Scott Spear is serving each 10-year-old sentences for the conspiracy and money laundering convictions.
The prosecutors argued that the backpage operators were unaware of warnings to stop disseminating prostitution advertisements, some involving children. The operators have been accused of having published free advertisements for sex workers and cultivating provisions with others who worked in the industry to bring them to publish advertisements with the company.
Backpage operators said they had never authorized advertisements on sex and made an effort to try to delete such ads by bringing employees to delete them and to create automated tools. Their legal team maintained that the content on the site was protected by the first amendment.
By pleading guilty, Ferrer acknowledged that the majority of backpage income come from escort advertisements, conspired to disinfect advertisements by removing photos and words revealing prostitution and the publication of a revised version of opinions.
In the memos of determining the sentence, the prosecutor and the lawyers of Ferrer say that he helped close the site thanks to his cooperation.
His lawyers say that Ferrer has provided evidence connecting the defendants to the criminal enterprise and said that the increase in backpage income comes mainly from prostitution.
Hyer has already participated in a program to broadcast free advertisements to sex workers in order to keep them away from competitors and win their future business.
His lawyer said that his client has sincerely remorse for his actions and had contributed directly to the convictions of other accused.
Lacey’s first trial in 2021 ended with a trial when another judge concluded that prosecutors had too many references to children’s sex trafficking in a case where no one has faced such an accusation.
Before launching Backpage, Lacey founded the Phoenix New Times Weekly newspaper with James Larkin, who was charged in the case and died by suicide in 2023 just before the second trial against the backpage operators.
Lacey and Larkin owned ownership interests in other weekly such as The Village Voice and finally sold their newspapers in 2013. But they kept Backpage, which, according to the authorities, generated $ 500 million in prostitution of its creation in 2004 until 2018, when the government closed it.
A report by the US Government Accountability Office published in June 2021 said that the FBI’s ability to identify victims and sexual traffickers had decreased considerably after Backpage was seized by the government, because the police knew the site and Backpage was generally sensitive to requests for information.
