Backpage Founders

Quick Summary

Backpage.com was the second-largest online classified advertising platform in the United States and, according to federal prosecutors and the U.S. Senate, the single largest facilitator of online sex trafficking in the country. At its peak, the site hosted approximately 73% of all online commercial sex advertising in the United States, generating over $500 million in revenue; the vast majority from its “adult” section.

The site was co-founded by Michael Lacey and James Larkin, veteran newspaper publishers who had built their careers on the alternative press (including the Phoenix New Times and Village Voice). Carl Ferrer served as CEO and primary operator. Federal prosecutors demonstrated that Backpage’s operators knowingly facilitated sex trafficking, including the trafficking of minors, by editing ads to remove language indicating that victims were underage, coaching advertisers on how to circumvent content filters, and structuring financial transactions to evade bank restrictions.

Ferrer pleaded guilty in April 2018 to conspiracy and money laundering charges. Lacey was convicted in September 2024 after a lengthy trial. The site was seized by federal authorities on April 6, 2018.

Timeline of Events

The Details

How Backpage Facilitated Trafficking

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations obtained internal Backpage documents showing that the company’s content moderation team actively edited advertisements to remove language suggesting that the persons being advertised were minors. Terms such as “Lolita,” “teenage,” “school girl,” “little girl,” and specific age references were systematically stripped from ads before publication; not to prevent trafficking, but to conceal it while preserving revenue.

Moderators were instructed to edit rather than reject ads, maintaining the flow of paid content. In some cases, Backpage staff assisted advertisers in rewording ads to avoid automated filtering. The company created offshore shell entities to process credit card payments after major payment processors (Visa, Mastercard, American Express) refused to do business with the site.

Impact on Trafficking Victims

NCMEC reported that 73% of all child sex trafficking reports it received involved Backpage. Law enforcement agencies across the country documented hundreds of cases in which minors were advertised on the site. In many cases, trafficking victims were photographed and their ads were posted by their traffickers; sometimes within hours of being recruited or abducted.

Survivors have described Backpage as the primary marketplace through which they were sold. The site’s user-friendly interface, wide reach, and low cost made it the platform of choice for traffickers. After the site was seized, anti-trafficking organizations reported a temporary but significant reduction in online commercial sex advertising, though activity subsequently migrated to other platforms.

The First Amendment Defense

Backpage and its founders consistently argued that they were protected by the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields online platforms from liability for user-generated content. This defense was successful in several early state-level prosecutions, which were dismissed on Section 230 grounds.

The passage of FOSTA-SESTA in 2018 created an explicit exception to Section 230 for conduct that facilitates sex trafficking, undermining Backpage’s primary legal defense. The legislation remains controversial: while it enabled the prosecution of Backpage, critics argue it has pushed sex work underground and made both trafficking victims and consensual sex workers less safe by eliminating platforms that also served as harm-reduction tools.

The Founders’ Background

Michael Lacey and James Larkin were not conventional trafficking facilitators. They were respected figures in alternative journalism who had won the freedom of the press battle after being arrested in 2007 for publishing the name of a grand juror investigating Sheriff Joe Arpaio; charges that were quickly dropped and resulted in a $3.75 million settlement. Their pivot from press freedom advocates to operators of the nation’s largest sex trafficking marketplace represents one of the most dramatic moral collapses in modern media history.

Connections