WUNRN
UNITED STATES – WEBSITE OPERATOR CONVICTED IN FEDERAL
COURT FOR FACILITATING PROSTITUTION
On December 11, the California owner and
operator of an online prostitution website pled guilty in a U.S. Federal Court
to charges of facilitating prostitution.
This marks the first federal conviction of a
web operator for hosting advertisements for sexual services.
The website, MyRedBook.com, operated across the
United States and Canada. It allowed potential sex buyers and MyRedBook.com
members to search for prostitutes and the sexual services they offered by
geographic location and other terms.
The website’s owner has forfeited the website
domain names and $1.28 million in cash and property. His sentencing hearing is
scheduled for March 19, 2015.
A 2014 article in the Albany Law Review has called
online advertisers the “invisible partner” to pimps and sex traffickers in
modern prostitution transactions. The article, which investigated the use of
internet technologies to facilitate sex trafficking, found that online
advertisers often profit from the violent exploitation of women and girls for
sex. The California conviction indicates that law enforcement is starting to
address the significant challenges posed by online advertising to preventing
and combating sex trafficking.
Compiled
from: California Operator of MyRedBook.com Website Pleads Guilty
to Facilitating Prostitution, Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice (December 11, 2014); Farley,
Melissa, et al., Online Prostitution and Trafficking, Albany
Law Review, Vol. 77.3 (October 2014).