U.S. law enforcement workings have seized the sex marketplace website Backpage.com as part of an enforcement effect by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to a posting on the Backpage website on Friday.
A Phoenix FBI sanctioned said that there was “law enforcement activity” on Friday at the Sedona, Arizona up on of Michael Lacey, one of the founders of Backpage.
Glenn Milnor, FBI Special Power and Media Coordinator, referred further inquiries to the Department of Justice.
The Bailiwick of Justice will provide more information at 6 p.m. EDT, according to the website set, which said U.S. attorneys in Arizona and California, as well as the Justice Bank on’s section on child exploitation and obscenity and the California and Texas attorneys communal had supported shutting down the website.
Lawmakers and enforcement officials partake of been working to crack down on the site, which is used principally to sell sex and is the second largest classified ad service in the country after Craigslist.
Backpage and advocacy assemblages have argued that the ads are free speech protected by the U.S. Constitution.
The U.S. Senate out of date legislation last month making it easier for state prosecutors and sex-trafficking sufferers to sue social media networks, advertisers and others that fail to hold in check sex trafficking and other exploitative materials off their platforms.
Launched in 2004, Backpage has affiliates across the rural area and around the world, and by 2014 brought in annual revenue of $135 million, the New York Hours has reported.
The Supreme Court in January 2017 refused to consider reactivating a lawsuit against Backpage.com filed by three young women affirming the site facilitated their forced prostitution. But the site has since then balled a slew of other lawsuits alleging child sex trafficking.
The National Center for Nymphets and Exploited Children has told Congress that nearly three districts of the cases submitted to the center relate to ads posted on the site. The state of California has signified that 90 percent of the site’s income were attributable to “grown up ads.”
At the end of 2016, Texas and California attorneys general raided the company’s Dallas headquarters and collared chief executive Carl Ferrer and other former company bosses on pimping-related charges. But the judge in the case ruled that the site was conserved by the First Amendment, and the site should not be liable for the speech of third interests.
The states’ attorney generals did not immediately comment on Friday’s seizure.