Michael Lacey, co-founder of the controversial classified website Backpage.com, is set for a do-over in court. Federal prosecutors in Arizona are gearing up to retry him on numerous charges, including facilitating prostitution and money laundering, linked to allegations he participated in a sex ads scheme. This decision follows a trial that concluded in November 2023 with a jury deadlocked on 84 charges, with Lacey escaping all but one count of international concealment money laundering, as reported by KRDO.
Notably, this is not the first legal rodeo for Lacey, whose initial trial ended in a mistrial back in 2021. A judge found that the prosecution's focus had veered too heavily onto references of a child sex trafficking, an issue for which none of the accused were charged. As mentioned by FOX 10 Phoenix, prosecutors lodged a formal notice of a retrial in federal court, honoring a deadline set by U.S. Judge Diane Humetewa earlier this month.
While Lacey's attorney, Paul Cambria, offered no immediate reaction after the notice was filed, the repercussions of the case have already rippled through other Backpage executives. The site's chief financial officer, John Brunst, and executive vice president, Scott Spear, have been convicted on various related counts. In contrast, two other Backpage employees managed to dodge a conspiracy charge and numerous facilitation of prostitution allegations.
Backpage, before its shutdown by the government in 2018, was alleged to have generated a massive $500 million in prostitution-related revenue from its inception. The operations of the website have long been scrutinized, with accusations swirling that the site's operators disregarded warnings to cease hosting prostitution ads and even engaged in monetary transactions purposed to mask revenues from such advertisements. According to the information provided by FOX 10 Phoenix, these revenue streams were allegedly obscured through the use of cryptocurrency and foreign bank accounts.
