Backpage Founders Charged With Money Laundering, Aiding Prostitution (theverge.com) 256
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.
Some bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Money laundering: bad
Child sex trafficking: bad
Prostitution: not bad. Get with the times USA, It's legal elsewhere.
Re:Some bad (Score:5, Insightful)
The money laundering is probably because they were 'knowingly' accepting dirty money from the prostitutes for ads
As far as child sex trafficking goes, that has become the rallying call of the new anti-prostitution racket because whenever we punish adults for doing adult things... it is 'for the children'
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I am curious about the money laundering part. There have been issues in the past with porn sites and other "naughty" companies being able to accept credit cards or Paypal for payment. That spawned a set of companies to act as middlemen to "launder" the payments to keep the anti-porn companies from seeing who the money is going to.
So I'm wondering whether BP was accepting payments for ads from companies that had their money with these alternative processors, or doing laundering in the traditional sense. I
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Re:Some bad (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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Money laundering even of legal income is still an issue when used as part of a larger tax evasion scheme.
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Legal earned money is already 'laundered' otherwise it would be legally earned ...
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Confusing terminology, but the point should be clear: Even if you didn't do anything illegal to earn the money, you might still want to keep it hidden from the government so you can avoid tax. You might even want to launder it into appearing to come from another, less-taxed source.
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... I am surprised that "facilitating prostitution" is a federal crime.
It's not, nor was Backpage charged with that.
The summary of the article tries to imply that it is, but that's just the usual bullshit media distortion.
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So I am surprised that "facilitating prostitution" is a federal crime
This is like "facilitating sex" or "facilitating an abortion".... it should be Unconstitutional for the same basic reason that Roe v. Wade. Rejects criminalization of abortions. Prostitution between consenting adults is as private a matter as sex which the state has no compelling interest in restricting; similar to the way in which they cannot restrict sexual acts based on biological gender.
Then why was he not charged with trafficking? (Score:2)
If sex trafficking on Backpage was so rampant, why was the back page founder not actually charged with sex trafficking [reason.com]?
What sources do you have to prove this? Yes there were a lot of ads for sex on Backpage, but how many of them were really trafficking? There are a lot of perfectly independent sex workers these days.
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Money laundering is welcome in Canada and Australia for Chinese locusts, snapping up all available property.
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"Money laundering" isnt even a crime on its own. Its a bull shit pile-on crime latched on to a normal crime.
* stealing
* breathing while stealing
* having a heartbeat while stealing
> Child sex trafficking: bad
> Prostitution: not bad. Get with the times USA, It's legal elsewhere.
If the feds suspected this why are the arresting website owners and not the sex traffickers?
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If the feds suspected this why are the arresting website owners and not the sex traffickers?
Well, see, in Neo-America, charging someone with a crime that they, personally, never committed is par for the course.
Kinda like when a cop shoots a thief, and they charge the thief's accomplice with murder.
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All who participated in the violent felony are responsible for all deaths as a result. This includes other criminals shot by police or even bystanders accidentally shot by police shooting at the criminal.
Don't wanna be charged with murder? Don't commit a crime with the risk of death.
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All who participated in the violent felony are responsible for all deaths as a result.
Theft isn't a violent felony; theoretically, a cop shooting a criminal who shot at him isn't a felony either.
Don't wanna be charged with murder? Don't commit a crime with the risk of death.
In Neo-America, merely interacting with a police officer can carry the risk of death; ask the estate of Philandro Castille.
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It is most certainly a crime if I launder YOUR money for you.
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So every married man in Sweden is hiding from the cops?
Mixed up bullsnot (Score:5, Insightful)
The prosecutors want to claim that the Back Page people were enabling the exploitation of children, but it is regressive laws on prostitution that allow abuse of sex workers in the black market.
When is our society going to crawl out of the dark ages and provide a safe workplace for sex workers? It is only when the trade is out in the open that people who exploit others can be removed through laws that protect sex workers instead of marginalizing them.
Back Page was actually providing a way for sex workers to operate without criminals managing them.
Re:Mixed up bullsnot (Score:5, Insightful)
Up next, eBay gets charged for facilitating the sale of stolen goods...
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Back Page was actually providing a way for sex workers to operate without criminals managing them.
It was also providing a way for criminals that "manage" sex workers to more efficiently sell them. And it's not just regressive laws that allow pimps, it's also the fact that it is cheaper and easier to coerce the vulnerable with drugs/threats/violence than to deal with people that demand their rights.
Why can't we get it in our heads that the real world does not operate according to a narrative. BackPage was both empowering for independent sex workers (a good thing) and empowering for violent pimps (a bad t
Re: Mixed up bullsnot (Score:3)
In Soviet America, the law violates you!
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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.
Do you realize you're simultaneously arguing for and against self determination?
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I read it as making fun of they hypocrisy in the right's view of self determination. Freedom freedom freedom, till it comes to women controlling their own bodies or sexuality, then it is evil evil evil.
You realize of course, both "sides" have this problem. They both want different sets of things to be forbidden, and other things to be mandatory. Neither one truly supports freedom in any meaningful way.
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You realize, of course, that only one "side" is claiming to increase freedom.
The left is fully aware that their policies limit libertarian version of "freedom" in order to accomplish a policy goal.
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Nope. If you are for prostitution you must be against guns, obviously. Never ever could someone be for the right to do both.
I think you misunderstand. I think both should be legal--though I'd never say I was "for" prostitution--because they both come down to an issue of self-determinism. I was pointing out the GP's inconsistency.
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Nope. If you are for prostitution you must be against guns, obviously. Never ever could someone be for the right to do both.
I think you misunderstand. I think both should be legal--though I'd never say I was "for" prostitution--because they both come down to an issue of self-determinism. I was pointing out the GP's inconsistency.
I am actually pro both prostitution and guns, as long as both are properly regulated. Another poster was right, my comment was a statement of the hypocrisy of current American society where something natural is abhorred and something potentially deadly is lauded; where children must be protected from anything sexual while many people are trying to increase children's' exposure to weapons in places they don't belong, such as in schools.
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Brilliant job morons (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Due Process (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Due Process (Score:5, Informative)
It's called a preliminary injunction.
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This is not twitter. If you want to use stupid fucking hashtags, go there.
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Re:Due Process (Score:5, Insightful)
the government would need to make restitution
Upon failure to convict, the government returns the physical property, but is under no obligation to "make restitution". They can return the computers with their drives wiped, or even disassembled. The do not pay for, or repair, anything damaged in seizure or storage. Plenty of innocent people have their businesses and lives destroyed in spite of acquittals.
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Re: Due Process (Score:4, Insightful)
Alas my bother, you're daydreaming. That "innocent until proven guilty" trope is a pure fairy tale. A story, like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, that we tell to little kids.
Unless you've been living under a rock, you know we have by far the largest Gulag in the world. Some people claim it's second only to Stalin's Gulag as the largest prison population in all history - but I have not verified that claim. And by Uncle Sam's own statistics, well over 90% of the souls interred in our prison and torture camps were coerced into giving false confessions ("plea bargaining").
In Soviet America, accusation is guilt. The accused may well be smarmy hacks. But unless they have a LOT of money, you can be damned sure they won't get a fair trial.
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In Soviet America, accusation is guilt.
I thought that was a good thing?
#metoo !!
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what right does the government have to take down their website and business just in case they get a conviction? Isn't the whole point of "innocent until proven guilty"
I believe the trick is in claiming that property (website, hardware, cash, etc.) does not get those rights. So you are innocent until proven guilty but your seized property is not afforded the same rights. And if you need that property/cash to defend yourself or keep the business running ... too bad.
Oliver had done a great coverage on civil forfeiture. [youtube.com]
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> So, you're saying if the Feds with probable cause and warrants raid some organized crime's money-laundering front company, that company should be allowed to keep on operating until the case has gone to trial and the responsible individuals are found guilty?
Yes. Why should they get to destroy a legitimate business based on a hunch?
Do we issue the electric chair to murderers before they are found guilty?
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Wrong analogy (Score:2)
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You don't understand what you are talking about. This isn't civil forfeiture, this is direct criminal forfeiture where the assets will have to be returned if the fed's get a conviction.
Civil forfeiture uses the civil courts and the person holding the property doesn't even have standing in the case to challenge the seizure and there are only a handful of states that require a criminal conviction in civil forfeiture.
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the intuitive belief that it is better to have ten guilty men go free than to send one innocent man to prison. Effectively, we have a very strong belief that people should never be sent to prison unless they are actually guilty.
When DNA sequencing first became admissible, the Innocence Project used DNA to show that about 10% of people convicted couldn't possibly have committed the crimes. That doesn't mean the other 90% were all guilty, just that the floor on false convictions was 10%. There is little reason to believe that we are doing much better today. Plenty of innocent people go to prison, and Americans accept and tolerate that.
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Big fuck you to the first amendment (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Much as I hate to say it (Score:2, Informative)
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...
Re:Much as I hate to say it (Score:5, Insightful)
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Who were the last two D presidents? Think hard...
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I despise Trump as much as anyone, but the blame for this cannot be pinned on him. It's a law that is promoted as a tool to protect children from abuse - it's a guaranteed pass, truly bipartisan, regardless of how badly-written it may be. Some things are just politically unopposable, which is why they make excellent excuses to achieve a less popular agenda. Like making sure prostitutes cannot organise and ply their trade in safety. Events would have played out no differently were Hillary in the oval office.
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The tax-free, money laundering evangelicals? Money Talks.
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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.
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Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:If anyone wants to know how Iran got to be.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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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.
We're importing lots of theocrats, quite mature ones. And the people who claim to be most worried about theocracy are the ones enthusiastically doing and supporting this importing.
It's time to legalize prostitution (Score:2)
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"virtually every dollar" is intended to prove that they absolutely knew they were facilitating a crime. I'm sure you know that aiding and abetting a criminal is also a crime.
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Re: 93 counts (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re: 93 counts (Score:2)
Coerced false confession FTW!
Prior charges dismissed (Score:3, Informative)
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 char
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Re:Not sure how to feel (Score:5, Insightful)
One of my favorite quotes seems appropriate here:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C.S. Lewis
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One of my favorite quotes seems appropriate here:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C.S. Lewis
Pretty sure that Lewis was against legal prostitution. Just sayin. He wasn't libertarian.
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Re: Not sure how to feel (Score:2)
I don't really understand the motivation of deranged anti-sex Progressives... but I don't believe God is a part of it.
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There is some bleedover. The former Morality in Media rebranded a few years ago into the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, and switched the political alignment of their rhetoric - dropped the religion and all the talk of family and morality, and started talking about protecting women from objectification. None of their actual positions changed - they still campaign to force racy TV programs out of production and demand the government do more to imprison distributors of pornography. The leadership just
Re: Not sure how to feel (Score:2)
Have you been living under a rock the past decade? And did your rock have no internet service?
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... but with 93-counts ...
93 counts for things that should have never been illegal in the first place.
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93 counts for things that should have never been illegal in the first place.
Then change the laws. Until then, they are illegal.
Re: Iâ(TM)ve got a boner (Score:4, Funny)
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So where is the first amendment protection exactly?
The first amendment has never applied much to commercial speech. There are laws against false advertising, restrictions on advertising cigarettes and booze, etc.
the basic idea that you own your body,
Self ownership has never been part of American law. We have always had laws against prostitution, and have long had drug laws, laws against suicide, laws against self-harm, restrictions on informed consent, etc. The AMA is trying to ban people from sequencing their own DNA. Congress unanimously banned human cloning, even though the constitution
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Congress unanimously banned human cloning, even though the constitution gives them no authority to do so.
And which part of the constitution does it violate?
Or other way around: what special extra authority would be necessary in the constitution?
What is next? Requirements of driving licenses are unconstitutional?
Re: Prison society (Score:4, Funny)
He won the electoral college vote fairly. You need to get over it, snowflake.
Wait, who are we talking about?
Re: Prison society (Score:4, Funny)
Excuse me, but I'm management. I get $0.75, plus an extra $0.25 whenever I can trigger an Anonymous Coward.
And that's not counting quarterly bonuses or benefits.
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The fact is, these people are individually human scum. They don't keep their word. They don't respect others. They connive, cheat, and otherwise mess up lives.
Yet we allow cable companies to keep their websites running.
Re: Prison society (Score:2)
Phoenix new times was one of the sharpest papers in the country. Steve Lemons investigation of the almost comically corrupt sherif arpaio is the stuff of legends.
To call it a hack paper frankly betrays a very poor understanding of what the press actually is supposed to do
Re: Prison society (Score:2)
Remember when Americans used to *value* freedom? I do...
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Remember when Americans used to *value* freedom? I do...
When was that?
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Please enlighten me! Lets set the live forever thing aside for moment and just to to justify using logic the any moral system - besides "might makes right".
See I don't think there is one without God. All arguments and philosophies which argue for morals without God boil down to "I am important because I say so."
If my response is "I don't agree and I don't care" then YOU don't matter. On there other hand if there is a creator God who does care, things are very different.
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Re: Prison society (Score:2)
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I work as a high class escort in the UK.
This comes straight in at Number One on my "sentences I never expected to read on slashdot" chart.
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Yeah, agreed, but (s?)he mysteriously forgot to include her number ;)
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