Michael Lacey, the 69-year-old co-founder of Backpage.com, says that he believes federal prosecutors intend to put him and his business partner, Backpage co-founder James Larkin, 68, “in prison for the rest of our lives.” Lacey made the comments in a new interview published Tuesday by the libertarian site Reason.com, and marks the first time that Lacey and Larkin have discussed the case publicly since the federal government shut down the site in April.
But on Friday, the Backpage sales and marketing director, Dan Hyer, entered a guilty plea on charges of conspiracy to facilitate prostitution, according to a report by The Associated Press. Hyer admitted that he took part in a scheme to induce prostitutes to advertise on Backpage, rather than on competing sites, by offering them ads for free.
The site could afford to give away ads for free in a plan to corner the market on prostitution advertising because Backpage raked in upwards of $500 million in ads for illegal sexual services over the past 14 years, according to prosecutors.
While it now appears unlikely that Backpage will be returning to operation anytime soon, the state Department of Justice in Delaware, where Backpage remains registered as a limited liability corporation, said this week that they plan to ask a court to revoke the company’s business registration, according to an AP report.
Lacey and Larkin, along with five other Backpage execs, were hit with a 93-count indictment in April, charging them with facilitating prostitution as well as laundering millions of dollars.
But in the interview with Reason, Larkin slammed the legal efforts against Backpage as the product of state politics in Arizona, where Lacey and Larkin live and where they started their first newspaper, the Phoenix New Times, in 1970. By the 1980s, New Times had become one of the largest publishers of local “alternative” weekly newspapers in the country, with New Times papers in 18 United States cities including Denver, Miami, and Los Angeles.
“Part of the reason this has really worked is because you have Cindy and John McCain involved and they see an opportunity to even a score," Larkin told Reason, referring to the Republican U.S. Senator from Arizona. "We didn't really care what politicians saw in us. And that's come back to haunt us."
"We spent 40 years doing journalism, groundbreaking journalism, and they want to take all that away," Lacey added.
According to Reason, New Times made the McCains a frequent target of its muckraking reporting.
“The paper would report on the McCains for their involvement with savings-and-loan scammer Charles Keating; dredge up Cindy's dad's connection to mobsters and murdered Arizona Republic journalist Don Bolles; and out Cindy as an opioid addict who forged prescriptions and stole pills from the children's charity she founded,” the site said.
But when Hyer pleaded guilty last Friday, he was the second executive from the firm to enter a guilty plea following CEO Carl Ferrer earlier this year. Trial for Lacey, Larkin and four other Backpage execs is set for January of 2020.
Photos by Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, Sacramento County Sheriff's Office
