Backpage Faces Court Sanctions Over False Statements for 3rd Time

The Missouri state attorney general has asked a court to slap the now-shuttered classified ad site Backpage.com with new criminal penalties and fines because, Josh Hawley says, the company lied to a federal judge in a lawsuit over Backpage’s role in promoting sex trafficking, according to KBRK TV News in Springfield, Missouri. Hawley become the third law enforcement official to seek sanctions against Backpage for denying in court that it knowingly ran ads for illegal prostitution, including the trafficking of underage victims. In April, about three weeks after federal authorities seized the site and shut it down, Sheriff Tom Dart of Cook County, Illinois, asked a court to sanction Backpage. The site had sued Dart over his attempt to persuade major credit card companies to cut Backpage off, claiming that Dart was violating its First Amendment rights. In the 2015 lawsuit, Backpage denied that it knowingly took ads for the sex trafficking of children. The company said the same thing in a 2017 lawsuit against Hawley, in which Backpage tried to shut down Hawley’s investigation into the site’s alleged trafficking involvement. And earlier this month a judge in Pierce County, Washington, ordered the company to pay $200,000 to two girls who say they were trafficked via the site, The Olympian newspaper reported. In that court case, Backpage also denied that they knowingly ran ads for sex trafficking in underage kids. But in early April, Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer took a plea deal and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, as AVN.com reported. As part of that deal, Ferrer, 57, admitted that Backpage knowingly ran ads for illegal sex services, and even edited advertisements specifically to conceal the true nature of the services being advertised. Ferrer’s admissions to prosecutors directly contradict earlier denials made by the company, including those made in legal documents and lawsuits filed by Backpage against law enforcement. The company’s lawsuit against Hawley in Missouri, claiming that Hawley’s investigation violated the site’s First Amendment rights, was tossed by a federal judge last November. But the attorney general now wants a court to impose new penalties, including forcing Backpage to pay back the state for legal costs incurred fighting the Backpage lawsuit. Despite Ferrer’s guilty plea, the site’s co-founders—Michael Lacey and James Larkin—have entered not guilty pleas on a 93-count indictment that hits them with money laundering charges. Their trial is not scheduled to begin until January of 2020. Image via Backpage.com