Slashdot Mirror
Backpage Founders Charged With Money Laundering, Aiding Prostitution (theverge.com)
Federal authorities have charged the two founders of classified site Backpage.com, along with five other employees, with laundering money and facilitating prostitution. According to The Washington Post, the Justice Department claims Backpage took "consistent and concerted action" to knowingly allow ads for illegal sex work. The indictment alleges that "virtually every dollar flowing into Backpage's coffers represents the proceeds of illegal activity." The Verge reports: Law enforcement agencies seized Backpage's servers last week, and co-founder Michael Lacey was charged in a sealed 93-count indictment, which has now been revealed. Lacey, as well as his co-founder James Larkin, were already charged with violating California money laundering laws, although a judge threw out state-level pimping charges. Beyond Lacey and Larkin, the Backpage indictment includes charges against the site's chief financial officer, operations manager, assistant operations manager, and marketing director. It also charges the executive vice president of one of Backpage's parent companies. Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer, who was previously charged with pimping in California, was not charged in this indictment. The Justice Department claims Backpage's owners tried to cover up the fact that most of its "adult services" ads involved prostitution, and that Backpage allowed child sex traffickers to keep ads on the site as long as they deleted age-related keywords. The indictment also claims that Backpage disguised payments for illegal services by having customers funnel money to foreign bank accounts or apparently unrelated companies, or by transferring funds into cryptocurrency. These federal chargers are reportedly unrelated to the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, a bill that would make website operators liable for illegal content posted to their sites. The bill is currently awaiting Trump's signature.
They also forced down Preferred411, the site that reviewed sex workers and verified the johns. The site kept things safer for everyone - the customers got to avoid scams and muggings, while the girls could verify their clients weren't psychopaths or serial killers.
Now it's much worse for everybody, don't be surprised if violent crime goes up. Thanks for saving us politicians.
It's called a preliminary injunction.
it's not free speech when it's a crime. That's called 'aiding and abetting'.
That said, Trump was elected partly by the evangelicals. This is him doing the bidding of those folks. So you're right, we shouldn't be surprised. Though I am a bit surprised how much power evangelicals wield in 2018, especially given how small a percentage of the population they are...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It has nothing to do with the first amendment. You have never had freedom of speech when it pertains to aiding and abetting illegal activity. This is not to say I agree that this should be a crime or that prostitution in general should be criminal, but it is and hence this falls squarely under those laws, freedom of speech does not apply.
Money laundering even of legal income is still an issue when used as part of a larger tax evasion scheme.
From wikipedia:
On October 6, 2016, Harris announced the arrest of Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer on felony charges of pimping a minor, pimping, and conspiracy to commit pimping. The arrest warrant alleged that 99% of Backpage's revenue was directly attributable to prostitution-related ads, many of which involved victims of sex trafficking, including children under the age of 18.[107]
On December 9, 2016, a superior court judge dismissed all charges in the complaint.[108] On December 23, 2016, Harris filed new charges against Ferrer and former Backpage owners Mike Lacey and Jim Larkin for pimping and money laundering.[109] In January 2017, Backpage announced that it was removing its adult section from all of its sites in the United States due to many years of harassment and extralegal tactics.[110][111] ... I wonder if they've learnt from the takedown and prosecution of sfredbook about how to "get these guys"?
He's right, though. If you're on the hook for something that might send you to prison for decades, taking a plea for a few years starts to look very attractive no matter how certain you are of you innocence. Our criminal justice system has issues.