Backpage hit with new evidence it controls sex-trafficking ads
A contractor for Backpage.com has been aggressively soliciting and creating sex-related ads for the sleazy classified ad site, according to a trove of newly discovered documents.
The explosive new evidence — which contradicts repeated denials by Backpage that it has played any role in the content of the ads posted on its site — shows that Backpage hired a company in the Philippines to lure advertisers and customers seeking sex from competing sites.
The documents could be a turning point in the yearslong campaign by anti-human-trafficking groups and Congress to crack down on Backpage’s persistent hosting of prostitution ads — including postings of underage girls and boys that have been linked to a slew of gruesome murders in the US and abroad.
The new evidence, which includes spreadsheets, emails, audio files and employee manuals, was revealed by chance in an unrelated legal dispute, and was first reported on Tuesday by the Washington Post.
Executives at Dallas-based Backpage have long denied claims from US lawmakers and law enforcement that they have facilitated prostitution and sex trafficking, arguing that Backpage is protected from such charges because it qualifies as a passive platform for third-party content under the US Communications Decency Act of 1996.
Backpage execs have also contended they remove illegal ads and report violators to the police. The company says it uses an automated program to remove objectional words from ads, such as “lolita” and “teenage” and “rape” — while failing to remove the ads, according to a Senate subcommittee report earlier this year.
In one email exchange that was revealed in the newly discovered court documents, a Backpage employee is actually shown to be restoring ads that had been deleted by the Phillippines-based contractor, Avion BPO.
“I was reviewing deleted ads,” a Backpage employee wrote to Avion. “Here are a few removals that I restored. Some only needed pics removed,” indicating that Backpage reposted ads that Avion agents had taken down.
“Backpage has been righteously indignant throughout our investigation,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a subcommittee member, “about how we were infringing on their constitutional rights, because they were a mere passthrough,” told the Washington Post.
“But that’s nothing compared to this” new information, McCaskill said of the newly discovered documents. “This is about as far from passive as you can get. This is soliciting . . . So I hope this opens the floodgates of liability for Backpage. Nobody deserves it more.”
Backpage general counsel Liz McDougall declined to comment after seeing the documents uncovered by the Washington Post.
Earlier this year, the damning bipartisan Senate subcommittee report led Backpage to shut its adult section. In the process, it put a red banner headline over its adult listings with the word “CENSORED” and release a statement that it had removed the section “as the direct result of unconstitutional government censorship.”
But more recently, law-enforcement authorities and advocacy groups have said prostitutes haven’t disappeared from Backpage, but rather moved to a new location — the dating section of the site.
More than 93 percent of Backpage’s ad revenue in 2011 came from its adult section, whose ads have included postings for sex with underage girls and boys, according to the January Senate report. Backpage’s gross revenue in 2014 was $135 million and is projected to be nearly $250 million by 2019, according to the report.
Backpage controlling shareholders Michael Lacey and James Larkin — who are the one-time Village Voice owners of the Village Voice — were arrested last October on felony charges of conspiracy to commit pimping. Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer was also arrested in Houston on Oct. 6 after getting off a plane from Amsterdam.
He, too, was named in a 10-count criminal complaint for pimping a minor, as well as the more serious charge of unlawfully pimping a girl whom he knew to be under 16 years of age.