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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.
This case is a big fuck you to the first amendment. Yea their business model involved allowing a site where prostitutes could advertise their services. But that's called free speech, either we have it or don't. To try to force on them the charges for people posting on the site is a broad overreach and attempt to punish a website owner for the actions and speech of others.
I hope to god these guys can afford good lawyers and get this case thrown out for the broad overreach that it is. Talk about a political prosecution, congress punched a hole in the law to target these guys, a hole that's going to be used to go after a hell of a lot more site operators.
Everyone should be shocked by what the Trump administration and Congress is doing here.
Money laundering: bad
Money laundering is "bad" only if the money came from harmful sources. Otherwise it is just another tool of government oppression.
Child sex trafficking: bad
"Child sex" and "trafficking" are very frequently appended as additional charges, even when there is no plausible justification. They carry severe penalties, so can be used to coerce plea deals when the government otherwise has a weak case, and they mean extra federal dollars targeted at these crimes, even when there are no convictions. So your tax dollars are paying for malicious prosecutions.
Prostitution: not bad. Get with the times USA, It's legal elsewhere.
It is also legal in some American jurisdictions, such as some counties in Nevada. So I am surprised that "facilitating prostitution" is a federal crime. I thought the feds stayed out of prostitution enforcement.
Is Stormy Daniels on Backpage?
When is our society going to crawl out of the dark ages and provide a safe workplace for sex workers?
Because sex outside marriage is bad and a horrible sin, unless of course you are a political or religious figure, in which case it is a simple human failing worthy of forgiveness. Heaven forbid (see what I did there?) we realize and embrace the fact that humans are sexual creatures. Oh well, at least we can have all the guns we want! Just work out all that sexual frustration the American way, at your local shooting range.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Sad thing is, the theocratic elements of the US are actually pretty new, part of an anti-communist revivalism only dating back to the mid 20th century. The original colonies were mostly theocracies, but each colony had problems with oppression of their people when living in other colonies and thus the problems of theocracies were very recent in their minds. I would say today we are mostly in the toddler phase of theocracy, about a half century in with the power of the theocrats waxing and waning.