
Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges - btimil
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/backpage-raided-ceo-arrested-texas-42630540
======
1024core
Why is it that in such cases, the government reaches for the CEO right away;
but when Wells Fargo employees open millions of fraudulent accounts, it's not
the CEO's fault? If I were to commit identity theft (which is basically what
the WF employees did), then I would be facing jail time; why hasn't anyone in
WF been charged with criminal fraud yet? Why not the CEO?

~~~
rayiner
You're comparing apples and oranges. The CEO of a small internet company
almost certainly has a hand in everything the company does. The CEO of a large
corporation has no idea what the line workers are doing.[1] If a bunch of
Yahoo employees had gone off and run as sex-trafficking site off Yahoo's
servers, they wouldn't go arrest Marissa Mayer. Not because "lobbying" but
because that would be stupid and unreasonable.

[1] I've done internal investigations at megacorps. When something shady goes
down with line employees they hire teams of lawyers _just to tell management
what the heck is going on_ inside their own company.

~~~
gscott
You are talking about 5,000 current employees being fired and many employees
who were fired for reporting it. If he didn't know, then he must not know
other things about Wells Fargo that are equally important.

~~~
twblalock
> You are talking about 5,000 current employees being fired and many employees
> who were fired for reporting it. If he didn't know, then he must not know
> other things about Wells Fargo that are equally important.

I'm sure that's the case, and I'm sure it's also the case for most CEOs of
massive companies.

Wells Fargo has more than 250,000 employees and more than 6000 branches --
more branches than any other US bank. There is nobody who knows everything
that is going on. It's just not possible.

The number of employees fired represents a tiny fraction of the total number
of employees -- about 2% or less.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Then how does this spread around to all the branches if (way) upper management
doesn't know? Does Suzy in Fl really spend her time chatting up Jackie in CA
to get the scoop on all the D/L ways to cheat? They have a little IRC channel
for duping WF management?

~~~
danielweber
Have you ever had a job? Have you ever had management insist upon some stupid
metric or some deadline that just could not be met and they refused to hear
about it?

People had to open new accounts or lose their jobs. Some people opened fake
accounts to accomplish this. When they were found out, they were fired. Sounds
like a horrible place to work, but the firings were proof that management
didn't want this to happen, not some bizarro proof that this is what they
wanted all along.

You don't need coordination to figure out how to game a system.

~~~
gscott
This is not quite right. They were pressured by managers to open fake
accounts, fired for not making quotas if not, fired if they reported the
practice, and then all fired once the government finds out and it blows up. Of
course the senior management plays dumb and keeps their jobs.

~~~
danielweber
They were not "all fired, once the government found out."

 _Wells Fargo confirmed to CNNMoney that it had fired 5,300 employees over the
last few years related to the shady behavior. Employees went so far as to
create phony PIN numbers and fake email addresses to enroll customers in
online banking services, the CFPB said._

[http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/investing/wells-fargo-
create...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/investing/wells-fargo-created-
phony-accounts-bank-fees/)

------
tessierashpool
FWIW, this headline is not completely accurate. The story itself says further
down the page, "Ferrer was arrested on felony charges of pimping a minor,
pimping, and conspiracy to commit pimping." None of these are actually
trafficking charges; they're run-of-the-mill prostitution charges.

There's also a story from a young girl who was forced into sex work, which is
certainly awful, and some stuff about studies and claims of sex trafficking,
but there's a clickbait factor to the headline. There are a variety of new
state and federal laws on sex trafficking which were passed in recent years,
and nobody associated with Backpage has been charged under any of them,
afaict.

~~~
gregpilling
and it was based on a few reports of minors, who paid for ads on backpage.com,
and that the sin was backpage.com took their money and should have known they
were minors somehow. Out of millions of ads posted annually, they should have
known that those three women were underage. Even after they checked the "I am
18" box.

Bad backpage. Or maybe someone is trying to get headlines on how they are
tough on crime. Because elections.

~~~
wcummings
I'm pretty sure backpage has been on LE radar at least since CL shuttered
their adult services section. It's pretty widely known as a site used to hire
prostitutes, those three women were probably more representative than you
think.

------
cft
This was no more a prostitution website than Craigslist, before Craigslist
struck a deal with attorney generals of several states to shut down its Adult
Classifieds section [1]. In fact, given Craigslist scale it had many more
prostitution (and probably child prostitution) ads. The question is: why Craig
and this CEO were given such disparate treatment? Because the times have
changed, or because Craigslist was much bigger and an arrest of Craig would
have unleashed a huge wave of rage from free speech supporters as a violation
of the principles of Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act, since
classifieds sites are republishers, rather than publishers of content and
should not be responsible for the classifieds content.

1\.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/business/16craigslist.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/business/16craigslist.html)
:

"The sex ads cost $10 and were on track to bring in $44 million in revenue
this year, according to the AIM Group, a consulting firm that closely monitors
the company. Craigslist also charges for some real estate and job ads, but
most listings are free"

~~~
pmorici
Probably because Craig'slist also have a sizable business in other areas not
related.

~~~
ChoHag
It's certainly easier to start with groups who only participate in activities
which are uncomfortable to publicly defend.

------
seibelj
Even if you are morally opposed to prostitution, is there really any benefit
to authorities when you remove a centralized location and move it to the
street or many different websites? If you really want to manage the
prostitution "problem", having it all on a single website seems like a benefit
for managing and researching the issue.

~~~
SwellJoe
Most sex workers agree that their safety is improved dramatically by having
the business side of it out in the open. And, there have been studies on sex
worker safety that indicate strongly that legal prostitution is safer for
everyone; it also reduces coercion when it is not underground (women don't
need a pimp, if law enforcement is on their side).

Since I started paying attention a few years ago, I've noticed that most
commentary from law enforcement and politicians on the subject of prostitution
frames it as "human trafficking" or just "trafficking", even when there were
no non-consenting parties involved (and nearly all prostitution is between
consenting adults). It is misleading, unethical, and actively harmful to the
safety of the people they're claiming to help, but, they do it anyway. The
implication that someone is being forced into sexual slavery makes them seem
like the good guys in the story...when, in reality, they're _mostly_ just
harassing and imprisoning poor women who are making an honest living the best
way they know how.

Of _course_ no one wants to see children being sexually abused. No one wants
to see children or otherwise at-risk people forced into prostitution. But,
that's already illegal; they don't have to victimize all sex workers to pursue
and prosecute those crimes.

The kicker here is that the police found these kids who had been forced into
sexual slavery because of the ads on this site. Had it been completely
underground, they wouldn't have found them, wouldn't have been able to set up
a sting, and wouldn't have been able to get the girls out of a dangerous and
abusive situation. Now, it goes further underground, where the risk is even
higher.

~~~
niftich
There's idealism on both sides of the argument.

On one hand, there are those who believe that conducting these arrangements in
the open is safer for all involved parties.

On the other hand, there are those who believe that sex work can never truly
be consensual, because even if consent is given, a sex worker may have felt
pressured to seek this life because all other choices available to them to
make a living and attain food and shelter were sub-par or nonexistent. This
argument supposes that given a different, idealized circumstances free of such
pressures, few people would choose sex work.

I find this argument very similar to the idea of age of consent, in which
society declares that people below a certain age are incapable of informed
consent, and similarly, the widespread societal taboo against suicide, which
implicitly suggests that no rational person free of undue pressures would
consent to ending their own life, therefore anyone who commits suicide was
pushed to do so by serious factors that impaired their ability to properly
consent.

Finally, there are those who just want to be 'tough on crime', and actions
like this fit the bill at first blush, while letting it operate would be
construed by the same population as inaction.

~~~
tuxracer
> there are those who believe that sex work can never truly be
> consensual...idealized circumstances free of such pressures, few people
> would choose sex work

In idealized circumstances free of economic pressures many of us would spent
all day at the beach. It's great many found their dream career and are getting
paid to do what they love. But for most what work is just work, a means to an
end. Not sure why sex workers should be especially singled out and
stigmatized. Would the janitor who cleaned the toilets in your office be doing
that if they weren't getting paid to? Would you even be in said office if you
weren't getting paid to be there?

~~~
empthought
No one should feel shame at having a toilet at the office and needing to pay
someone to help clean it.

Everyone should feel shame at coercing a person who would otherwise not have
sex with them into having sex with them. Buying someone's labor is different
than buying their bodily autonomy and consent to sex.

~~~
anon12345690
You have a strange definition of "coercing"

This isnt rape, it's just paying for an exchange. If a person doesn't want to
use their body, they're free not to. Manual labor also involves using your
body with wear and tear, it's not that different or special.

~~~
empthought
If that's the fiction you need to tell yourself to avoid feeling shame at
condoning the use of prostitutes, I guess I can't really stop you.

~~~
imtringued
The sex workers don't care about your morals. They have different morals than
you and care about different things. Stop telling them and other people what
morals they should have.

Regulated prostitution may be bad in your eyes but unregulated prostitution is
even worse for those who are already in this industry.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

~~~
empthought
We have a perfectly good approach already; it's called the Nordic model.
Arrest johns, not prostitutes.

And there are thousands of former sex workers that will give you an earful
about what you think you know about prostitution and what prostitutes think.

~~~
Thimothy
Ah, the Nordic model... The country in the middle bans prostitution and
offloads it to the neighboring countries. I have yet to see any macro
advantage on it, besides a little reduction and a lot of smug people feeling
better about themselves.

A while ago I spent quite some time researching the prostitution thing, trying
to make up my mind about it. I remember the UN report on global trafficking[1]
being specially enlightening. The conclusions I took from it:

-Prohibition doesn't work. It just drives the prostitution underground, and as the pimps are already doing something illegal they don't mind going the extra mile, make it straightforward slavery and abuse the women so much than they are too terrified to escape. A small country (like Sweden) can offload the prostitution to nearby countries, but if all Europe were to do that the consequences would probably be really dire for a lot of women.

-Full legality increases human trafficking. As there is a lot of legal prostitution going on, it's easier to get away with the trafficking. In Europe usually takes the shape of organized crime importing awful lot of women from western Europe to Holland and Germany. Long term, it's thought to increase the well being of prostitutes, both imported and local, but we still have to grok how to do it without make it without the traffic.

-Not legal nor illegal. This is the situation in most countries, and the implementations vary wildly. In some countries the police does not intervene at all and it's a cesspool of mafias fighting for control, others make it a tourist attraction, while others haven't made it legal but don't prosecute the prostitutes. Curiously enough, this last approach is the one that gets the best results at stopping exploitative human trafficking as long as pimping is really prosecuted, don't remember anyone really explaining why. My guess is that in this situation large scale trafficking operations stand out much more, but who knows.

TL;DR; It's hard. Swedes are a tiny bit hypocrites in this one.

[1] [http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-
repor...](http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-report-on-
trafficking-in-persons.html)

~~~
feklar
Indeed just having one region legalize skyrockets trafficking. Prices also go
down, so prostitution becomes less attractive to locals as a way to make money
which means foreigners in poor countries have to be imported, which leads to
trafficking rings. Vice claims of the 500k prostitutes in Germany two-third's
are foreign [http://www.vice.com/read/a-visit-to-one-of-germanys-all-
you-...](http://www.vice.com/read/a-visit-to-one-of-germanys-all-you-can-fuck-
brothels-432)

It's extremely difficult to stop gangsters from trafficking because they
operate in the trafficked persons home country as well, so if you run to the
police in Germany or Canada they can seek retribution on your family members
back home in Ukraine, Vietnam ect. Thus the not legal nor illegal does a good
balance of preventing super brothels opening up full of imported sex workers
while at the same time being able to arrest pimps without relying on the
testimony of the sex workers.

------
feklar
Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr are full of escort ads, so is 'fetlife' which
is basically a prositution social media site for people in that scene. Then
there's all the porn sites with escorts uploading videos of themselves like
XVideos and shilling their services. Nobody is going after Instagram's CEO for
allowing #gfe or #(city)escort hashtags.

Backpages seemed like a good police tool in that they could entrap politically
connected people with fake prostitution ads, and they could identify organized
prositution more easily. For example here it was simple to find the gangster
listings running microbrothels, these are condos rented by street gangs who
import girls from Asia, seize their passports and pimp them out. These gangs
were also well known to rob each other's micros, and there are plenty of
stories on all those escort review forums of armed gangsters kicking down the
door and jacking the place since police won't be called.

Selective law enforcement again happening here so the Backpages CEO guy must
have made political statements advocating for legalization or was politically
active in some other way. It's my main theory why Redbook was shutdown,
because they entertained very loud activists in their forums calling for
legalization who often called out city and state politicians directly.
Reminder if you want to run an illegal business don't be politically active
and you can operate under the radar like Fetlife with it's thousands of escort
ads.

------
55555
With hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per year, I guess they should
have donated more to the relevant Attorney Generals' campaign funds. My best
wishes to all of the victims in this article.

------
DavidWanjiru
Question: If Bernie Madoff had advertised his pyramid scheme in, say, the New
York Times, can the paper be held responsible for subsequent losses suffered
by those who took up the offer made in the advert?

Is this case legally similar, or do the specific crimes of human trafficking
make it different? You know, sort of like how contracts are ordinarily
enforceable, but if I agree to marry off my 12-year-old daughter to you, that
"contract" is not enforceable.

~~~
anon12345690
The basic rule is contracts cannot override the law.

~~~
perlgeek
The real question is: to what degree are providers of platforms (such as ad
agencies and newspapers that publish ads) responsible for checking the
lawfulness of the content that is published through them?

And is it consistent for the different kinds of platform?

------
mrthunder
I don't understand what that CEO did? He just runs classified ads website how
is he a pimp? Why is he responsible for other people actions on his website?
Is this just a show or he is really in a trouble? This doesn't sound like a
free country.

------
rdl
I wish there were a good way to separate out coerced or human trafficking
(which I believe is less common in the medium to high end US prostitution
market) from the morally objectionable stuff. Arguably the way to do that is
by providing a "clean" alternative, either "good"/safe/consensual
prostitution, or just really high quality vr/robotic/immersive porn. It's
really hard for me to find fault with someone deciding to have sex with other
adults for $200-500+/hr vs. working in a slaughterhouse or call center or
something for $8-15/hr.

------
jgunsch
> One of the advertisers, identified only as 15-year-old "E.S.," ''was forced
> into prostitution at the age of 13 by her pimp," according to an affidavit
> filed with the complaint. She used other online advertising services until
> they were shut down, the court filing says, when she turned to Backpage.

This reads horribly: the feds took down multiple sites and knew about this
15-year-old, but didn't manage to reach her in the process?

~~~
ben_jones
It was my impression that sites like Backpage were massive "honey pots" that
feds and local law enforcement used to contain and frequently thwart illicit
activities such as prostitution. It seems like they are taken down at
arbitrary times afterwards either after their usefulness as a law enforcement
mechanism has diminished and, slight tin foil hat here, whenever an agency
needs a "big bust" for political purposes. Go figure many are hurt in the
process.

------
AndrewKemendo
Is the distinction between this page and the kind of things posted on
craigslist, strictly that the posters had to pay to list their ads? Or do
prostitutes not post on craigslist? AFAIK Newmark hasn't had to deal with any
of this.

I'd be interested to know if there is something similar and legal in countries
that allow prostitution (Netherlands?). Seems like they were making a lot of
revenue for what is basically illegal ads - so a legal version would do even
better I would imagine. Though I suppose the pricing would drop if it were
legal.

~~~
themgt
I posted a new thread w/ the NYT link [1], [2] because it had this helpful
tidbit:

 _A congressional investigation this year found that the website changed some
of its adult classifieds to conceal the fact that the advertisements were for
sex acts with minors. Mr. Ferrer was subpoenaed by a Senate subcommittee last
fall to answer questions about reported child sex-trafficking ads, but he did
not show up._

Found to be covering up child sex trafficking by Congress and you just blow
them off and don't change anything? That's the point where getting arrested
shouldn't be much of a surprise.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/us/carl-ferrer-backpage-
ce...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/us/carl-ferrer-backpage-ceo-is-
arrested.html) [2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12658053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12658053)

~~~
makomk
The website changed some of its adult clasifieds to conceal the fact that they
were for sex acts with minors, or the people posting them changed them?
Because one of these seems an awful lot more likely than the other, and I
don't see how Congress could honestly have determined that the site itself did
it. I _suspect_ that someone's arguing that banning adverts for child sex is
in fact concealing them because people work around the bans, but it's hard to
find any information on the actual basis of this claim.

Of note, it also seems that Backpage did report suspected child sex
trafficking to the NCMEC, based on a statement by the NCMEC to Congress in
2015.[1] This appears to have been one of the things used against them, with
the congressional reports mentioning the large proportion of reports that
involved Backpage as proof that they were a child sex trafficking ring while
omitting that they were the ones doing the reporting.

[1]
[http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/download/?id=B087F957-02BD-4F58-...](http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/download/?id=B087F957-02BD-4F58-8CFA-C47B42271928)

~~~
asddddd
Congressional comments from when Backpage was held in contempt:

> Our investigation showed that Backpage “edits” advertisements before posting
> them, by removing certain words, phrases, or images. For instance, they
> might remove a word or image that makes clear that sexual services are being
> offered for money. And then they would post this “sanitized” version of the
> ad. While this editing changes nothing about the underlying transaction, it
> tends to conceal the evidence of illegality. In other words, Backpage’s
> editing procedures, far from being an effective anti-trafficking measure,
> only served to sanitize the ads of illegal content to an outside viewer.

Turns out NCMEC showed up for the hearing that Backpage skipped, and didn't
have many nice things to say about Backpage.

> “You see, it is sometimes hard to square Backpage’s public statements about
> its business practices with the reality on the ground. For example, the
> National Center recently was searching for a child who went missing – and is
> still missing – and found that she appeared in a sex advertisement on
> Backpage. That is sadly common. But what made this case even more incredible
> was that the Backpage ad actually contained a missing child poster of that
> same child. That poster had the child’s real name, real age, real picture,
> and the date she went missing. The other pictures in the ad included topless
> photos. We’d certainly like to know what supposedly market-leading screening
> and moderation procedures missed that one.

[https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/me...](https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/media/senate-
passes-portman-resolution-to-hold-backpagecom-in-contempt-of-congress)

------
jasonjei
I'm confused and I'm not a lawyer. Isn't this interstate commerce and
therefore the purview of federal authorities? Why is CA leading a felony
investigation for a supposed crime that happened over the Internet?

------
xbryanx
It's important to understand that this arrest is happening in concert with a
major operation to disrupt sex trafficking rings outside of Backpage
specifically.

[http://www.startribune.com/feds-to-announce-bust-of-
global-s...](http://www.startribune.com/feds-to-announce-bust-of-global-sex-
ring/395996911/)

Neither article mentions specific coordination, but considering the arrests
happened on the same day, I'm imagining that there must have been some
coordination in the investigations.

------
aphexcx
As someone who recently built a project ([http://www.aphex.cx/iconoclast-a-
child-prostitution-hunter/](http://www.aphex.cx/iconoclast-a-child-
prostitution-hunter/)) to find this exact stuff, I'm glad to see action taken
against Backpage. Pimping kids out should be hard.

~~~
iwasanewt
how does that work?

~~~
wingerlang
One of the sections in his post is literally "how does it work"..

------
h4nkoslo
The first definition of "pimping" they provide, "making money off of
prostitutes", seems to encompass anything from a gas station allowing the
corner whores to buy cigarettes to an NGO with a grant for "rescuing" them.

------
conductr
If BP goes down, this is a huge opportunity for another site. Just like it was
for BP when CL closed their section. Who is positioned to fill the void?

------
jcslzr
The real criminals are the people making prostitution illegal

------
blazespin
There really is only one appropriate solution for this and that is universal
basic income.

~~~
yladiz
This _really_ ignores the reality of sex trafficking. Sure, sometimes you
become a prostitute because you need money for you or your family, but much of
the time it's against your will[See 1, page 13 PP 3]. A universal basic income
will not solve that. A UBI may help a prostitute get out of their profession,
because many do want to leave and money is a large concern[See 1, page 14 PP
1], but that still ignores other issues such as health issues e.g. STDs and
addiction to drugs.

1: See
[https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/238796.pdf](https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/238796.pdf)

~~~
oldmanjay
Is there any source for your partition estimation?

