Stateside service?

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User#8628 said:
None of those charges was trafficing right?
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meiji said:
They were, actually.
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Well, the full story is actually more complicated than that. There was one trafficking charge that was pleaded guilty to by the company in the state of Texas.

To be frank, I really don't know the details of Texas state criminal law and can't be bothered to have a look at the moment. However, this has been reported about the prosecution in Texas:-

The one trafficking charge in all this comes from Texas, where Backpage LLC plead guilty to "knowingly receiving a benefit from participating in a venture" that caused the compelled prostitution of Erika Brewster, then around age 16 or 17. On behalf of Backpage, CEO Carl Ferrer has entered a guilty plea to one count of trafficking in persons and one count of engaging in organized criminal activity (in addition to one count of money laundering on his own behalf).

In a statement, Ferrer said he knew that the "escort" section of Backpage was largely ads for prostitution, which is illegal in 49 states and most of Nevada. But he does "not concede" that Backpage or any other defendant entities "had knowledge that the victim in this case...was underage at the time the Backpage.com advertisements of her were posted."


Ferrer entered the guilty plea nonetheless, he said, because he was "aware that the Defendant Entities are guilty under the law 'regardless of whether the defendant knows the age'" of a victim.
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https://reason.com/blog/2018/04/16/backpage-plea-to-sex-trafficking-charges


However, it was also reported by the New York Times that he was required to have the company plead guilty to this state trafficking charge as part of a personal plea bargain over federal charges:-

The chief executive, Carl Ferrer, pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy and three counts of money laundering in California, and to money laundering in Texas, the states’ attorneys general announced. Additionally, the company pleaded guilty to human trafficking in Texas.

The state-level pleas were required by the federal plea agreements Mr. Ferrer and Backpage entered on April 5
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/us/backpage-plea-deal-ferrer.html


Otherwise, as you say, there were no trafficking charges. The federal charges were reported here:-

But Lacey isn't actually charged with actual sex trafficking. He faces 93 total charges, 79 of which are felonies. For the felonies, he's charged with one count of conspiracy, 28 counts of various kinds of money laundering, and 50 counts of violating the Travel Act. The Travel Act is how they're hitting him for prostitution. Soliciting prostitution is not currently a federal crime (as yet). But the Travel Act allows the Department of Justice to intervene and apply federal charges in certain state-level criminal violations that cross state lines or foreign borders. Prostitution is one of the crimes the Travel Act covers, and the Department of Justice has used the Travel Act to shut down other sites (like gay escort site Rentboy.com in 2015). While it's not technically wrong to say that Lacey is being charged with facilitating prostitution (how many media sites are reporting it), the feds are doing so by using a round-about fashion.

https://reason.com/blog/2018/04/09/backpage-founders-93-charges-lack-actual

And, if you really want to, you can read the actual indictment here (pdf):-

https://www.justice.gov/file/1050276/download

I guess that it's a bit like how they took down Al Capone. If you're not American and are wondering what the "Travel Act" is and why they got indicted on 50 counts under this Act (or even if you are American and are still wondering the same thing) this is a US law that prohibits using the US Postal Service for the purpose of engaging in certain specified criminal acts, including prostitution.

So basically, most of the felony charges are because they mailed out flyers to people advertising Backpage using the US postal service.


EDIT

Sorry, I was slightly wrong. It looks like the Travel Act can also be used when adverts are also placed on the internet and can be seen by people in other states.
 
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TonyBe said:
So basically, most of the felony charges are because they mailed out flyers to people advertising Backpage using the US postal service.
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Beyond what you said I think they were also receiving payments via USPS as well...
 
A few updates:

There's apparently a site similar to ECCIE that's gotten more traffic recently : http://ourhome2.net/vb/index.php I have a (dormant) account there that I don't remember the password to. Oops.

I checked in with the guys that run rubmaps about the status of aampmaps and their answer was sort of vague and nebulous, claiming they don't know what the status is. Since those sites share user databases, I find that a little hard to believe, but oh well.
 
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Babaram said:
FYI, Malwarebytes blocks this site; "Your Malwarebytes blocked this website because it may be phishing you. We strongly recommend you do not continue."
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Ahh, might be they are using a fake SSL cert or something. Firefox is reporting it as 'not secure' but I didn't dig too deeply in it.
 
Many girls are out of work now because of backpage getting down and took a financial hit...
This is basically like if your workplace would be shut down from one day on the other.

If you are established in The mongering scene in the US and have a few regular reliable girls from websites that are now (temporarily) down, don't forget to check in on them to see if they make ends meet financially. And if it works out, book an appointment with them, or recommend them to a friend or to a medium thats not currently shut down. :)
 
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