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Tony Ortega’s Former Boss Sentenced to Prison for Sex Trafficking Site Ortega Championed
On August 28, the founder of the Backpage sex trafficking website, Michael Lacey, was sentenced to five years in prison.
Lacey was hate blogger Tony Ortega’s former boss—a boss Ortega praised as “smart enough to start Backpage.”
Beyond gushing about his criminal employer, Ortega extolled the virtues of the site he founded—a site the attorney general’s office described as “a multi-million-dollar online sex trafficking hub.”
Minors trafficked on Backpage include a teenager who described being gang-raped, choked and forced to perform sexual acts at gunpoint. Still others were strangled or stabbed to death.
Lacey was given until September 11, 2024 to report to the US Marshals Service to begin serving his prison sentence. Lacey’s co-founder, James Larkin, committed suicide before trial in 2023.
Ortega championed Backpage with such vehemence that The New York Times labeled him the sex trafficking site’s “attack dog.” Ortega ridiculed human rights activists seeking to expose Backpage and, in a desperate bid to keep the site in business, publicly downplayed sex trafficking as “a mass panic,” “national fantasy” and “small problem” and targeted those raising awareness about what he called a “nonexistent epidemic of sexual slavery.”
Even up to days before Lacey’s sentencing—and months after his conviction—The Mercury News’ Frank Pine and Martha Ross continued to use Tony Ortega as an anti-Scientology source.
