UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

 FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA 

 _________________ 

United States of America, )

 ) CR-18-00422-PHX-SMB 

 Plaintiff, ) 

 ) Phoenix, Arizona 

 vs. ) September 8, 2021 

 ) 1:19 P.M. 

Michael Lacey, et al., )

 )

 )

 Defendants. ) 

______________________________) 

 

BEFORE: THE HONORABLE SUSAN M. BRNOVICH, JUDGE 

REPORTER'S PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

OPENING STATEMENTS

Official Court Reporter: 

Barbara H. Stockford, RMR, CRR, CRC 

Sandra Day O'Connor U.S. Courthouse, Suite 312 

401 West Washington Street, Spc. 39 

Phoenix, Arizona 85003-2151 

(602) 322-7247 

Proceedings Reported by Stenographic Court Reporter 

Transcript Prepared by Computer-Aided Transcription 

Case 2:18-cr-00422-DJH Document 1324 Filed 09/10/21 Page 1 of 49
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A P P E A R A N C E S 

For the Government: 

 U.S. Attorney's Office 

 By: PETER S. KOZINETS, ESQ. 

 KEVIN M. RAPP, ESQ. 

 MARGARET WU PERLMETER, ESQ. 

 ANDREW C. STONE, ESQ. 

 Two Renaissance Square 

 40 North Central Avenue, Suite 1200 

 Phoenix, AZ 85004 

 U.S. Department of Justice 

 Child Exploitation & Obscenity Section 

 By: REGINALD E. JONES, ESQ. 

 1400 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 600 

 Washington, DC 20530 

For the Defendant Michael Lacey: 

 Lipsitz Green Scime Cambria LLP 

 By: PAUL J. CAMBRIA, JR., ESQ. 

 ERIN McCAMPBELL PARIS, ESQ. 

 42 Delaware Avenue, Suite 120 

 Buffalo, NY 14202 

For the Defendant James Larkin: 

 Bienert Katzman PC 

 By: THOMAS H. BIENERT, JR., ESQ. 

 WHITNEY Z. BERNSTEIN, ESQ. 

 903 Calle Amanecer, Suite 350 

 San Clemente, CA 92673 

For the Defendant John Brunst: 

 Bird, Marella, Boxer, Wolpert, Nessim, Drooks, 

 Lincenberg & Rhow PC 

 By: GARY S. LINCENBERG, ESQ. 

 GOPI K. PANCHAPAKESAN, ESQ. 

 1875 Century Park East, 23rd Floor 

 Los Angeles, CA 90067 

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Case 2:18-cr-00422-DJH Document 1324 Filed 09/10/21 Page 2 of 49
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A P P E A R A N C E S (Continued) 

For the Defendant Scott Spear: 

 Feder Law Office PA 

 By: BRUCE FEDER, ESQ. 

 2930 East Camelback Road, Suite 160 

 Phoenix, AZ 85016 

For the Defendant Anthony Padilla: 

 David Eisenberg PLC 

 By: DAVID EISENBERG, ESQ. 

 3550 North Central Avenue, Suite 1155 

 Phoenix, AZ 85012 

For the Defendant Joye Vaught: 

 Joy Bertrand Esq. LLC 

 By: JOY MALBY BERTRAND, ESQ. 

 P. O. Box 2734 

 Scottsdale, AZ 85252 

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I N D E X

 PAGE

OPENING STATEMENT BY MR. EISENBERG 5

OPENING STATEMENT BY MS. BERTRAND 19

OPENING STATEMENT BY MR. CAMBRIA 27

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(In open court; jury not present.)

THE COURT: Mr. Eisenberg, are you going next?

MR. EISENBERG: Yes, I am. Your Honor.

THE COURT: Okay.

MR. EISENBERG: Your Honor, I've added a prop.

THE COURT: Okay.

 (In open court; jury present.)

THE COURT: Be seated. We are back on the record with

the jury present.

Mr. Eisenberg?

MR. EISENBERG: Thank you, Your Honor.

OPENING STATEMENT BY MR. EISENBERG

MR. EISENBERG: Colleagues, Mr. Padilla, Your Honor,

government counsel, jurors: The government has the burden

here. The burden is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that my

client or any of the other clients intended to commit a certain

crime in this case: facilitation of prostitution. It was not

Mr. Padilla's intention to do that. His intention was to

screen ads, as the head of the moderators, in order to allow

them to be published for legal services. His intention was not

and, in fact, he made an active effort to prevent the

publication of ads that were illegal; that is, sex for money.

Mr. Padilla, would you stand, please?

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Andrew Padilla. I am

David Eisenberg.

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Thank you, sir.

I represent Mr. Padilla. Mr. Padilla's job at

Backpage was operational. He started in screening

advertisements. The working environment of Backpage at that

time was over there on Jefferson Street, in a building that all

can see from the public walk, in the desk in an office.

Nothing hidden. He worked at a desk with his fellow

moderators. When the operation moved from Phoenix to Dallas,

he worked in the Dallas Observer building, not hidden, in a

building, not in a cave, not in a tent, not hidden.

His sources for guidance in terms of moderation -- and

I'll talk a little bit about this more, but I think it's

important to get it out right now. He, Mr. Padilla, was not

the source or the idea for how moderation would work. That

belonged principally to Carl Ferrer who was the chief executive

officer and the cofounder of Backpage.

You will hear throughout this case that any idea with

respect to how moderation was going to work did not come from

Andrew Padilla. It came basically from Mr. Ferrer, and

Andrew Padilla followed Mr. Ferrer's guidance. It also came

from the lawyers who -- about whom you have heard, and I'll

tell you a little bit more.

The attorneys by name: There were at least three of

them before Liz McDougall came. Some were in private practice.

Others actually had work space, work space at Backpage. So

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they were physically there in order to give advice with respect

to moderation. So, if Mr. Padilla needed advice, he didn't

rely on himself. He relied on the attorneys and he relied on

Mr. Ferrer.

His background is interesting in that he didn't get

past the 11th grade. Went to high school in Maryvale. When he

left, he worked in a warehouse from 1991 to 2004 as a 

blue collar worker. He was a forklift operator.

Eventually, after he worked there with his brother and

his father, he found a job at Backpage. This job was to

moderate ads. Nothing else. He did nothing else at Backpage

except to moderate ads. He started at $11 an hour in 2006.

Eventually, he worked his way up to being a salaried employee.

He did get a bonus, but it wasn't related to the volume of ads.

It wasn't related to the number of ads that he could publish or

that his teams could publish. There was no penalty taken out

of his salary for rejecting an ad or taking an ad off the

Backpage website. His income, therefore, was not dependent at

all on the number of ads that came through.

The evolution of these ads: Starting about the first

three years, his main focus wasn't on moderation with respect

to adult; it was more on attending to cleaning up the spam that

had come in for publication. And he assisted his clients with

ads. He oversaw the edits of ads that were posted to the

various sections. At that point in time, he did not focus on

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adult moderation. There was no need to do that.

Then along came the access to the postings that

were -- at some point, had been on Craigslist. These allow,

according to the rules that he was supposed to follow, for the

publication of legal ads in the Adult Services section. Not

pornography, not sex for money, but legal ads predicated upon

standard that he learned, not that he developed, but that he

learned. And so, as a worker, as an operational person, his

goal was to follow the standard that had been set for him

principally by Mr. Ferrer and by the attorneys.

As volume increased, the moderation staff itself

increased so that, by 2008 and 2009, starting then until

moderation ended, there were at least 100 people doing this

work connected with Backpage. The initial -- initial steps of

moderation hadn't been developed very much at the beginning

where it was simply get rid of nudity. Anything that was nude

was gone. That was the standard that my client followed

because that's the standard he was told to follow. They

focused on language as well, but this was sort of an

indeterminate, indiscriminate, undefined standard. What do the

words mean? For guidance, they looked to Mr. Ferrer who was

the person in charge, not my client.

Mr. Ferrer became very busy. The Backpage business

expanded. It went global. Work became more intense. Some of

the moderators worked at home. Some of the moderators came

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into the office. However, as moderation needs increased, so

did the need for direction. This is where Mr. Ferrer really

came in with respect to how you moderate an ad that appears to

have something in it that may be problematic. Take out words

or take out pictures. The decisions continued to come from the

lawyers. You will see and the government will show you many,

many printouts, many PowerPoints, many attachments to emails

that list descriptions of words. You saw them during

Mr. Jones' opening statement. This word is out; that word is

out; that word is out; that word is out; can't do that word;

can't do these words in conjunction with other words. All of

that got developed by Mr. Ferrer and the lawyers.

Now, you know, lawyers -- I'm not going to apologize

for lawyers. I'm one of them, but the fact of the matter is,

when you are not a lawyer and you are working in the context of

something that involves legal reference, legal statements,

legal help, you tend to follow that which is exactly what my

client did throughout the time that he worked for Backpage --

go to the lawyers or go to the boss.

So here's the development. Moderation, please

understand, constantly developed and I'm not going to go into

the actual of bits and pieces of it, but I'm going to divide

this into two steps. First, as it began to develop, there were

meetings with Mr. Ferrer and the lawyers. The attachments that

Mr. Ferrer sent out were discussed with the lawyers. There

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were seminars. People would gather in a room. They would show

these words up on a board: These are good; these are not.

Now, they consisted of banned words or phrases, some of the

ones that were very obvious. The goal here was to take out

that which could be problematic and leave in that that which

passed muster. This was hard to apply many times, but there

were banned portions not only of words, but parts of bodies.

Then, at times, even Mr. Ferrer himself directed the

removal of an ad. Next came Ms. McDougall. Now we've got

something more structured. And, remember, my client is not the

developer of the structure. He's the implementer. He is the

manager. He's the person who is supposed to bring it about.

That's his job.

And Ms. McDougall came in, I think it was 2012. She

remained at Backpage for six years. Her theory was, and it was

put into operation, if an ad had bad language, sex for money,

it was out. The whole ad, gone. Don't even bother to fool

with it. Just don't let it pass. If the image was bad, too

much was exposed, take the image out. Let the rest of the ad

go. That's what my client followed. The ad in that case would

run.

In the whole context of this, in the thousands,

millions of ads that were posted, my client did not know the

posters. He didn't know their backgrounds. He didn't know

their locations, for the most part, except to tell from an ad,

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and he didn't know their associations. To him, this was a job

that required someone to have some oversight and try to put it

into practice. Not the standards; the job.

Now, you've heard talk from my colleagues about the

commitment that Backpage had to law enforcement. This was

designed to prevent underage exploitation. And it was part of

Mr. Padilla's job and also part of his assistant, Ms. Vaught,

to determine whether there was a reason to refer an ad to

NCMEC, and this is how it worked. There was no prohibition on

the moderator looking at an ad and deciding it's got to go to

NCMEC. This is even before the ad got into the newspaper.

Send it to NCMEC. They understood that. That was part of

their prerogative and they had the right to do that. Nobody

ever stopped a moderator from sending an ad to NCMEC.

If a moderator could not determine or felt insecure

about the issue -- is this for child exploitation? -- they were

free to come to Mr. Padilla and Ms. Vaught and, indeed, they

did. And then, they, Mr. Padilla, would refer the ad to NCMEC

or tell the moderator "Go ahead and do it, it's okay."

There were also complaints from third parties about

child exploitation. These too got referred to NCMEC. The

standards to refer a potentially child-exploitive advertisement

were set by the lawyers and, to some extent, by Mr. Ferrer.

The elements were was the photo evocative? Did it look like

somebody was underage? Pretty hard to tell. Pretty hard to

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tell. Was there an age indicator in the advertisement?

Something like "17" or "near 17" or "just got out of high

school" or something like that, that would be a criteria. The

degree of nudity was another criteria and the context of the

advertisement itself, whether it was clear that an underage

person was offering themselves for sex for money. You know,

sex for money wouldn't have mattered whether it was an adult or

an underage person; that ad was gone. This is how it worked.

I told you a little bit about how the referral was

made. Backpage had a link set up to NCMEC. If you were going

to refer an ad, as a moderator, up it went into the link and

over it went to NCMEC just as soon as you could post it. There

were 24-hour-a-day access, seven days a week.

So if a moderator working at home doing the night

shift, which they did, saw an ad, they wouldn't bother to call

Mr. Padilla. They didn't have to. They would send it over

then, that evening, and NCMEC was theoretically going to act on

the ad. NCMEC was only open five days a week from

approximately 8:00 to 5:00. Sometimes those ads didn't get

over to the next stage until later on.

Here's the next stage. NCMEC might refer that

advertisement to law enforcement. Law enforcement, as

Mr. Bienert showed you, would then, in effect, either ask or

subpoena Backpage for the information with respect to the ad

because they wanted to investigate the potential of the

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referral from NCMEC to a child who had been in danger.

Every single time, every single time they sent in a

subpoena or a request, it was fulfilled by Mr. Padilla's

section. They had a standing custodian of records whose job it

was to go find the ad and the history of the ad and they would

send it to law enforcement.

In turn, law enforcement did what we've been calling

"attaboys": "Great job, great job. Thank you so much. Best

compliance I've ever seen." And, indeed, there were times when

Backpage would refer more than the ad to that particular law

enforcement person. They might even give other indicia of that

ad or other background with respect to it. This compliance was

within 24 hours typically.

Through all of this, through all of these attaboys,

Mr. Padilla was never told by law enforcement, not by the

Denver police, not by the Boston police, not by whatever police

department you cared to look at, "You're committing

prostitution." He never heard that. Through all of these

emails and all of these contacts, there was never one thing

that was said to him and not one thing, I venture to guess,

said to anybody over at that moderation unit anything about

committing facilitation of prostitution. Indeed, whether it

was said in any other form besides an email, it just isn't

there. Just isn't there. So, as far as he is concerned, he's

operating apparently within the law.

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Now, part of this case has been, during the opening,

contained a few items of emails that I think I need to set

straight. First one is this email. This was shown to you

during the government's opening. Okay. Here's the

advertisement or, sorry, the email. It's Exhibit No. 56 in the

government's opening. Just as they did with the other

defendants, they will put the picture of defendant on the ad.

It bears no longer saying this, it's repetitious, Mr. Padilla's

picture did not appear along with the email.

Here's an email dated October the 8th, 2010, and,

according to the government, it reads like this: "Leaving

notes on our site that imply that we're aware of prostitution

or in any position to define it enough to" -- should be "is

enough to lose your job over." This, as you can tell, has been

cropped. The actual email is complete and I'll show it to you

in a minute. "If you don't agree with what I'm saying

completely, you need to find another job."

There was not one mention of prostitution in the

PowerPoint presentation. This was a presentation designed to

create a standard -- and this is important because they left

this in -- a standard of what images are allowed -- a standard,

a standard that you moderate, you could follow, and not allow

on the site. That got left in. Thank you. If you need the

definition of "prostitution," get a dictionary. Backpage and

you are in no position to redefine it, because we are dealing

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with advertisements that are in the adult sector and what we

are doing is preventing an advertisement coming out for

prostitution. The only way we can do that, according to what

we have been told, is if it's sex for money or something like

that, that type of thing.

Let's look at the real email or -- in it -- in its

entirety. Here's the first sentence under "Until further

notice, do not leave notes in users' accounts." And, as you

can tell from this particular email, what the government showed

you was cropped.

Next: "Backpage and you, in particular, cannot

determine if any user on the site" -- should be "is" -- "is

involved with prostitution," and the reason is -- is that

unless, under the guidelines they have, the guidelines they

have, this is an ad for prostitution. Otherwise, it's not our

business to define it. Our business is to moderate it. That's

the first email.

The second email had to do with nudity. Here we go.

This is an email, January 14th, 2011. Again, Mr. Padilla's

picture appears. What this says is "Nudity violations will

always be a part of this business and we shouldn't treat our

users unfairly because the company standard for propriety is

constantly changing."

Here's the rest of the email. First of all, let me

stop at the top of the email. It's not just an email to one

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person. If you count the names on this email, it's from

Mr. Padilla, courtesy copy to Ms. Vaught. There are some 40

names in this particular email. They are all moderators and

here is what he is saying in its entirety. 

First, down to the part that starts "Andrew Padilla

wrote": "Backpage will be increasing the restrictions on

images in adult categories effective immediately. It will be

increasing the restrictions on images."

Second, "The latest changes apply specifically" -- and

then you can read what it applies to -- "bare breasts, butt

cleavage and sheer clothing." He is now giving as much

guidance as he can to the changing evolution of the nudity

guidelines. That's his job. Not to develop the standards, but

to put them out. Thongs are still acceptable for bottoms, but

they must be worn, so on and so forth.

The old rule supersedes this. If genitalia is

otherwise exposed, out. That is, if a thong is being worn

properly, but anything is visible or bulging out of the crotch,

it is still a violation.

This may not be a standard that's particularly

appealable in the sense of looking at things and being

judgmental about them. That's not his job. Nor was it the job

of Backpage because, as you have heard, these attorneys who had

preceded me have made a great point about what it means to be

able to publish in accordance with First Amendment and

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Section 230 of the statute that was quoted quite thoroughly by

counsel. They had the right to do this. What they're trying

to do is do it in such a way that this all will pass muster and

there will be no worry about facilitation of prostitution.

Then it goes on to talk about sheer clothing is still

allowed and so forth. And then at the bottom -- at the bottom,

it says: As always, you should only be redacting content and

not deleting the entire ad when you find these violations.

These violations are completely different from ads for illegal

services. This is a different type of advertisement. Adult

content. Nudity violations will always be a part of this

business and we shouldn't treat our users unfairly because the

company's standard -- not his, but the company's standard,

according to what has been properly set by the lawyers, is

constantly changing. If, however, you run into ads that

endanger a minor in any way, Community Remove the ad and send

the ad URL to Joye.

"Community" may be a misnomer, but the idea is there.

Remove the ad, send it to Joye Vaught.

You didn't get any of that when the government opened

its case.

So what about Mr. Padilla's intent? I think I've

captured it. I've tried to capture it for you as best I could.

His intent was to accomplish his job. For him, this was a good

job. He had a job that he enjoyed doing because he was

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responsible for putting out the newspaper. His job was to

screen ads to comply with known but evolving standards by

conforming those standards which would be acceptable to the

escort business, the massage business and other forms of legal

adult entertainment. These are standards not that he

developed. He didn't set them. They were set by Mr. Ferrer

and by the lawyers. His intent was not to post ads or to cover

up for prostitution.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is my client in a

nutshell. You know, if you really wanted to pedal prostitution

and facilitate it, he wouldn't have banned anything. Let the

ad go in. Let the money for sex go in. Let it ride. He

didn't need to ask for pay based upon the volumes of ads that

he could have put out. He never did that. Or he could have

gone off in some hut someplace in a remote area and done his

thing. Didn't do that. Worked in an office building

surrounded by several other people who were in that moderation

group.

So, ladies and gentlemen, as you go along and you

listen to all of this, keep in mind that, from his perspective,

what he was doing was to try to make the system work just like

every one of these other defendants was trying to do: Make it

work so that it could properly publish in accordance with the

rules and regulations and the ideas that he and others were

operating under.

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Thank you.

THE COURT: Ms. Bertrand?

MR. BERTRAND: Your Honor, I'll be using the Elmo

during the presentation.

THE COURT: Okay.

OPENING STATEMENT BY MS. BERTRAND

MR. BERTRAND: Good afternoon. My name is Joy

Bertrand. And it's easy to keep us straight, as I said in voir

dire, because my client's name is Joye, Joye Vaught. And 

Ms. Vaught was Andrew Padilla's subordinate at Backpage. We'll

talk about that in detail this afternoon.

Let's start with reasonable doubt. And lawyers use

these words a lot, hear them on TV. They have weight; they

have power. And I'm going to leave this up here and refer to

it while we're talking.

What we don't talk about well is what is a reasonable

doubt. And it's a juror, using reason or logic, could believe

that a doubt may be there, that there is a possibility of a --

of another version of the facts and other interpretation of the

facts than the prosecution asserts. And it's their job in this

prosecution to rule out doubt. And this may be doubt that the

lawyers suggest to you. It might be doubt that you raise in

your own thoughts as you listen to the evidence. But they have

to rule it out. If they don't, there is only one verdict and

that's a "not guilty" verdict.

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We talked in voir dire about some people -- some

people feel the system makes it too hard to convict. It's

supposed to be hard. Our Founding Fathers wanted it to be

hard. So don't -- don't feel bad about holding them to the

high standard.

A doubt is any possibility that, if true, defeats any

element of the crimes that they have to prove. And here

Ms. Vaught is in a little bit different situation. Mr. Padilla

-- here Mr. Padilla are different in this case in that they

face none of the money laundering charges. They only face the

conspiracy charge and the counts of specific facilitation of

prostitutions. I'm not going to address the money laundering.

That's not anything we can respond to. But I will talk about

the two crimes and what the government, the prosecution, has to

prove here -- every element beyond a reasonable doubt.

So, first, conspiracy. Conspiracy is a fancy name for

an agreement, an understanding. And a criminal conspiracy has

an intention behind the agreement to do something illegal. You

can be -- you can conspire to commit arson. You can conspire

to commit homicide. You can conspire to do any crime, but you

have to have more than one person and everyone has to know

they're in this agreement.

The next thing that the government must show is that

this agreement was to do something illegal and everyone was

on -- had some understanding that this had an illegal intent to

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it.

So I can conspire to throw a surprise birthday party

for somebody. That's legal and there's nothing wrong with

doing that. The word "conspiracy, the word "agreement" here

does not have any sinister meaning.

And then, lastly, someone has to do something in

furtherance of the agreement. And that's what each of these

elements, the prosecution is going to show up wanting here.

So, first off, the government is going to have to

prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Vaught knew there was

an agreement to do anything and that there was an agreement.

An agreement to do what? She's low on the totem pole here.

We've got powerful, powerful people running a huge

organization. And, like many employees in huge organizations

at the bottom of the totem pole, they're not going to be

brought in to all of the understandings that the other people

have. Here there's not even an agreement to break the law.

What we have is a newspaper going out of its way to

comply with the law and to make sure it's following the law.

And you're going to hear evidence in this case that Backpage

spent millions of dollars on moderation. And, when Craigslist

shut down, it was a tsunami to Backpage, and Backpage answered

that by hiring more moderators, people working 24 hours a day,

working at home, working in other countries, just to process

these ads.

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And, like Mr. Eisenberg said, they could have said

"Hey, you know what, let it roll. Free speech. Have at it."

They didn't. They saw the responsibility with having this

forum and they accepted the responsibility and went out of

their way to make sure they were compliant. And Ms. Vaught is

on the ground floor of this organization working with the

moderators and trying to keep all of this moving and trying to

make sure that they're each being careful. So you're not going

to hear evidence that Ms. Vaught intentionally joined anything.

She was policing the ads and policing the moderators.

The evidence also will show that Ms. Vaught took her

job very seriously. Some of the emails mentioned yesterday,

taken a little out of context, but there's two here, for

example. Both -- these are within three months of each other.

Ms. Vaught was the supervisor for Colleen and she cc's Andrew,

her boss, on this. She is warning Colleen to get her act

straight in moderating. And she says, on February 27,

"Colleen, I am going through your work from last night and

finding some pretty bad violations in the ads you approved.

Please slow down and read carefully. There isn't much room for

mistakes." And then she gives the examples of the ads that

should not have been let through.

Colleen continues to miss and, in April 2014,

Ms. Vaught again writes to her. She's putting this in writing.

She's putting her on notice, cc's Mr. Padilla: "Hi, Colleen.

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The number of ads you viewed last night was a lot higher than

normal and there was no action taken on any of them. I found a

bunch of violations that were missed. Here are a few examples.

This is a warning, Colleen. Slow down and pay attention to the

ads closely. This is the kind of thing that can get someone

fired."

And the way that -- you'll hear that the way

Ms. Vaught was able to kind of initially tell who is doing

their job and who isn't was by how many ads they went through

in a shift and, if they went through too many, if they let too

many through, Ms. Vaught knew they weren't paying attention or

they were just scrolling through. So when she saw someone

whose numbers were off, she went in and checked herself and

told employees "Knock it off. Take this job seriously."

The other way that we know Ms. Vaught took her job

seriously is that she interfaced with law enforcement. She saw

her job at Backpage as being an arm of law enforcement. And,

like you've seen, they had a reason to trust the police. They

had a reason to trust these law enforcement officers that were

saying "Thanks, we couldn't have done it without you. Great

turnaround. Thanks for helping us find a really bad guy."

Ms. Vaught and her colleagues were invited by law

enforcement to speak at conferences. That's someone who takes

her job helping law enforcement seriously. That's not someone

joining a conspiracy to violate the same laws she's going to

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work every day to make sure are not violated.

We also have Ms. Vaught's interaction with the

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. So she was

the person who had to cull through all of these materials that

would be sent to the Abuse at Backpage.com email. Third

parties could be people perusing the site, saying "Hey,

something looks wrong with that. Send that to Abuse." Other

customers of Backpage could send reports of potential abuse.

And that created a lot of extra work for Ms. Vaught to sort

through. 

And then there were the people that the moderators

observed in these ads that looked like they were underage. And

you're going to hear in this trial that Ms. Vaught played it

safe. She erred on the side of caution and she said anyone

that looks under 21, not under 18, goes to NCMEC. And you're

going to hear testimony NCMEC at one time finally said "You

guys are flooding us with so many reports." That's not someone

joining a criminal conspiracy to perpetuate the same crimes

she's going to work every day to stop.

You're also going to hear -- because this is a

specific intent crime, we do get to talk about people's

character, and you're going to hear Ms. Vaught had many reasons

to make sure that she was doing her job well, that she was

following the law. She had demanding family obligations and

this job helped her take care of her family. She was not going

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to do something to jeopardize this.

Much like Mr. Padilla, she grew up on the west side.

She's got a high school diploma. She's super-bright, and she

works. She works really hard. And this job, with that level

of education and this level of responsibility and status, made

her proud. She was proud of working for Backpage and working

in the moderation section and helping law enforcement.

So that's the conspiracy.

Ms. Vaught and the other defendants are also charged

with distinct acts of allowing ads to go through and, by

allowing those ads to go through, to facilitate prostitution.

And here's where the government is going to really have

difficulty ruling out alternative options. First, they've got

to show this is a specific intent crime. So the prosecution

has to show that each one of these defendants looked at each

one of these ads. You saw a couple of them posted: "It's the

journey, not the destination" lady who is 44 in the nightie.

Each one of them saw the ad, said "That is prostitution and

I am going to assist."

MR. JONES: Objection, Your Honor. Argumentative and

misstates the law.

THE COURT: The objection is sustained.

MR. BERTRAND: They have to show they knew those ads

were for prostitution and that it was prostitution in the

jurisdiction where the ad was running. So on top of it all,

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they've also got to know how many dozens and dozens of local

laws to make sure that this one in Sacramento fits the

Sacramento definition versus the Seattle versus Wichita Falls.

And they had to know they were breaking the law when they

allowed the ad to run. They can't.

The government, the evidence will show, will not be

able to rule out that they never saw these ads of the millions

that ran every day. And, if they did, as Mr. Bienert pointed

out, they're all for legal conduct.

When we talked about, in voir dire, reasonable doubt,

which is the standard they must meet, it's high. And in this

chart, you see there's all different gradations of belief and

acceptance of facts from "I believe they didn't do it

completely" to, in the middle, "it's possible, more likely than

not." Okay. Then you get into "I think it happened. I have a

strong belief that it happened." But it is not until we get to

reasonable doubt that you can convict. Anything short of

reasonable doubt requires acquittal.

And here is the example I will leave with you: We

measure risk. All of us measure risk all the time. And recall

the Tylenol incident in the eighties where cyanide was found in

maybe three bottles in all the United States. That's why we

have to have those foil caps and all that stuff on our jars

now. It's a couple years after that, and you or one of your

family members has a raging headache and you go to that

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medicine cabinet and you say "Hmm, I don't know how long this

Tylenol's been sitting here." Do you take it? That's

reasonable doubt. I ask you to keep that in mind throughout

this trial and hold them to their burden. It never shifts.

The job always remains with them. And if they cannot meet

reasonable doubt, the only option is to acquit these

defendants.

Thank you.

OPENING STATEMENT BY MR. CAMBRIA

MR. CAMBRIA: May it please the Court, fellow counsel,

ladies and gentlemen of the jury: My name is Paul Cambria.

I represent Michael Lacey.

Michael, please stand.

Michael's wife, Jill, is here. Michael's sons, Colin

and Roarke, stand please. They're here for support. And --

thank you.

And I'm here to talk about what I believe the proof

will show and will fail to show. And Her Honor is here, of

course, to tell you what the law is at the end of this case.

This case is about knowledge. It's about intent.

They have to prove that each of these defendants intended to

further a prostitution business, advertise through these ads

that they have listed in this indictment.

Let's put some things into perspective. The proof

will show that there are millions and millions of ads during

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the years that are covered in this indictment. They have found

50 out of millions and millions that they claim demonstrate a

violation of the law and are part of their case. Millions and

millions. Just think about that for a second.

The other thing is this: You heard from Mr. Bienert

about some of the history of our clients, of Mr. Lacey and

Mr. Larkin. You know, some people hide behind the First

Amendment and some people believe in the First Amendment. And

they believe in the First Amendment and the proof will show

that they're the real deal. You heard Mr. Bienert refer to the

fact that there was a time, as you know, they formed these

various newspapers in the seventies when they were Arizona

State students. They eventually had several newspapers, 17

around the country, and they specialized in being different in

the sense that they wrote about things that traditional

newspapers tried to avoid, things that were controversial,

things that criticized public officials. And, indeed, they

criticized a local police enforcement official and he decided

to retaliate against them by arresting them the middle of the

night, putting them in jail, and these gentlemen began their

First Amendment voyage, if you will. They fought back. They

sued. They won approximately three and a half million dollars.

The prosecution would have you believe here that money

is their driving force, that that's why they're doing all this,

and all this helping of the police and so on is just a cover.

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Well, they took the three and a half million dollars that they

earned in that lawsuit, they donated it to local Hispanic

community groups of all political stripes and academic

institutions that were opposed to racist and discriminatory

political tactics.

They also spent millions of dollars, if you will,

helping an organization called Children of the Night. It's a

nonprofit. It helps women and girls who have been trafficked,

and they spent millions of dollars on that. They saved a

historical building here at a cost of several million dollars.

This was the Booker T. Washington School at the time. They

saved that. So the proof will show that money doesn't drive

them. They are the real deal.

And the reason why they have not buckled and said "Oh,

yeah, we'll close the adult section" -- because that's what

Craigslist did. Craigslist was threatened and they closed the

adult section of Craigslist. Didn't do any good. The proof

will show without a doubt that the wrongdoers, the abusers,

simply moved to another section of Craigslist or moved to

Facebook or moved to TikTok or moved to one of the others.

You'll see. But these gentlemen said, no, wait a minute, there

are millions of people who are posting ads on Backpage that

have nothing to do with criminal activity, whether it be a job

or a couch or a car or what have you or a striptease or

something like that in the adult sector that's legal.

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When the federal government in 2018 came in and closed

Backpage.com and seized it, all those millions of people who

posted ads that had nothing to do with adult in any way had

their voice silenced. And so these men feel and believe with

their hearts and their soul that the answer is not to ban the

website. The answer is to use the website as a tool to fight

the wrongdoers. The wrongdoers are the pimps, the people who

prey on others, the ones who violate the law.

There are wrongdoers in everything and every aspect of

life. Think about it. There are people who abuse telephones

to commit crimes. They're wrongdoers and they use telephones

to commit crimes. There are people who use the mail to commit

crimes, use the U.S. government's own function, the mail, to

commit crimes. There will always be those people.

So the question then becomes do you eliminate the

websites, the phones, the mail because there are abusers or do

you join with the authorities and identify these people and

prosecute these people? And that's the program that they

adopted. And they were advised by their attorneys and others

that, if you shut down the adult section, like Craigslist,

they're just going to move to something else. And Craigslist

they moved over to the dating sections. You're going to see,

the proof is going to show, that even Facebook now is being

used to market people, if you will. TikTok is, Tinder,

Twitter, a number of others -- they're all being used by the

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abusers.

These people who sit here today never met one single

person who ever posted an ad on Backpage. They never forced

them to write an ad. They didn't force them to engage in any

kind of conduct that would violate the law. They didn't share

in any funds that they may have made as a result of charging

people for their services. They didn't do any of those things.

They sold an ad.

Now you're going to learn from some of the witnesses

here that, you know, this whole internet thing at the time that

Backpage was created was in its infancy. Everybody was

learning what to do with it. I mean -- and you can draw on

your own experience. You know, you start off and you have a

Facebook page and you're lucky that you were able to put it on

your phone. And then one of your kids, like one of my six

daughters, comes up and goes, "Oh, hey, Dad, do this, push

that," and you find out all these great applications that are

on it, right?

Well, when they form this -- and understand there's

only one person who came up with Backpage, and that was

Carl Ferrer. It was his baby, okay. Carl was an ad man.

That's what he did. He sold ads. He learned how to, you know,

create more ads. This was his thing. That's what he did. And

so it was in its infancy at that time. And that means that,

you know, everybody got some experience as to how they would

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start to abuse it, what would they do. If you banned a phone

number in numbers, they'd write it out -- t-w-o, t-h-r-e-e --

that sort of thing. Okay. And these things kept happening. A

lot of the websites did nothing to help the authorities

identify and prosecute the actual abusers.

Now, there'll be one thing that is beyond dispute:

Mike Lacey is a newspaper man. He's identified all over this

case as an editor and a writer. That's what he did. He wasn't

a Backpage guy in the sense that he is no computer guy. Yes,

he was co-owner of the parent company that owned Backpage, but

Backpage was created by Carl Ferrer.

Mike never took any ads. Mike didn't do anything with

moderation or anything else, all these other things. He didn't

develop any of the day-to-day protocols or any of that other

stuff. He was the newspaper man. Remember, they still had the

newspapers up until a certain period of time. And you will see

from time to time through this case that he -- he appears, if

you will, when somebody says something that's an exaggeration

or is not true or whatever, Mike weighs in and writes an

article or contributes to an article or something. That was

his thing. He's a newspaper man. Never changed from being a

newspaper man. Backpage was the creation of Carl Ferrer, and

Carl was the hands-on person, and it will be obvious.

Their first witness they're going to call is somebody

who is going to tell you that he called Backpage to say that a

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certain ad was to be removed because it was for prostitution.

Now he's a police officer who happened to post that ad. And

who answers? Carl Ferrer. And, as he's talking to this

witness, he can hear the keys typing. Carl is that hands-on

with Backpage. That's what he does. And he finds the ad and

so on and so forth. This was Carl's baby.

The newspapers -- and again, to show you the

genuineness of these gentlemen as newspaper people, they won

over 3,800 awards including the xxx Pulitzer Prize for a

critical article. That's the real deal. These are real

newspaper people, and that's where Mike lives. He's a

newspaper man.

He -- the first time he ever saw these 50 ads was when

these charges were filed and he was shown the ads and the

indictment. He just didn't have anything to do with the

day-to-day operation of Backpage. However, he was told

repeatedly by Carl Ferrer and a number of attorneys that Carl

and others had hired to advise them as to how to -- how do you

preserve the First Amendment for all the people that have now

been deprived of that when the government shut them down? How

do you preserve that and, at the same time, not promote the

abuser's activity?

And a number of attorneys advised them. A number of

court decisions. You saw today Mr. Bienert referenced a number

of court decisions that you'll hear about where the courts

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agreed that the First Amendment applies and that certain things

who maybe to the untrained appear to be something questionable,

it turns out that they're not and they're fully protected.

Example: You'll hear testimony that these so-called

abusers, the pimps, they would post a picture of a total

stranger that they didn't even know, that they would just lift

off of the Web and they would post that picture and that would

be of a younger-looking person, and it was only done by them to

try to get people to acquire the ad, if you will. And then

when the person who answered the ad went to the door, the old

maid card was there. I mean, it was a whole different deal.

And so now you know that you can't rely on the pictures.

In fact, some of the witnesses will testify that

Backpage was very, very, very proactive in reporting anybody

they thought was under 25 years of age, and they would report

them to NCMEC. And NCMEC is National Exploit -- National --

I'm sorry -- National Exploitation of Children. And what it

meant, it was an organization that would report to the police.

So, for example, if somebody at Backpage thought that an

individual looked like they were under 25, they would report

them to NCMEC and then it would be up to the NCMEC

organization, or NCMEC, to follow through and to send that to

the appropriate legal authority, to the appropriate police, if

you will. National Exploitation of Missing Children --

Exploitation and Missing Children. NCMEC.

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And, indeed, you'll find out that, at one point in

time, Mr. Lacey and others happened to have a meeting with the

NCMEC people and Mr. Lacey was upset because he felt that they

were not spending 100 percent of their time trying to take care

of children as opposed to veering off into some other area, if

you will.

So now we look at Backpage and say to yourself, all

right, they have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they

were facilitating this illegal conduct, this prostitution, in

violation of state law, whatever state it was in, this

prostitution business. They'd have to, number one, know about

it and, number two, specifically intend to advance it.

Well, think about this for a second. If you're

Mike Lacey and you're being told by the person who runs it day

in and day out we are spending millions of dollars collecting

information for the authorities, we are providing paper trails

to the authorities so they can prosecute the actual wrongdoers,

the pimps and so on, we are spending money to send our

employees to court to testify in prosecutions and to convict

people who are abusing your website -- and, indeed, the proof

will show that they did, indeed, send those people. They did,

in fact, testify and those individuals were, in fact,

convicted. And if you were a reasonable person of reasonable

intelligence -- and I submit that Mike Lacey is -- and you were

told we have a number of lawyers who are skilled in the 

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First Amendment area and in the criminal area, some former

prosecutors and so on, and they have advised us that we --

MR. JONES: Objection, Your Honor.

THE COURT: What's your objection?

THE COURT REPORTER: I'm sorry. Mr. Jones, I didn't

hear you.

THE COURT: Mr. Jones, the court reporter couldn't

hear you.

MR. JONES: Sorry. He's misstating the law,

Your Honor.

MR. CAMBRIA: I didn't state the law, Your Honor.

THE COURT: The objection is overruled.

MR. CAMBRIA: Thank you.

-- and that you have hired lawyers who specialize in

this area and they have advised you how to do these things

lawfully and not be somebody who is advancing or promoting. So

think about the website and ask yourself, as we go through this

case, if this is promotion or if this is prosecution.

Number one, they had a warning section on their

website that said, if you are underage or you have something to

do with someone underage, you are subject to being punished or

prosecuted. They have on their website, on Backpage, a place

where you can report if you think somebody is abusing Backpage.

Just anybody now. If you think, when you read their ads,

somebody is abusing someone, you can hit that and report them.

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They have public service announcements on Backpage indicating

that there's severe criminal penalties for violating the law.

They have a specific manual, if you will, that they developed

for the police to tell the police how they can get information

from Backpage quicker so that they can use it to prosecute the

wrongdoers. They have a manual that they put together and they

show the police how they can have a quick turnaround for

information. Not only that, but they, on their own, develop a

program where they -- if the police say "We're interested in

this ad," they then, through their program, are in a position

to show that ad is connected with several other ads and they

then give all those to the police.

They also, the proof will show, have advised the

police, listen, there are abusers on other websites out there.

There are abusers on Craigslist and all these other places and

here's where they are. 

And then the police have used Backpage to create

so-called sting ads where they would make up an ad, make it

appear to be an ad for prostitution. Backpage, as it turned

out, the proof will show, took it right down and they had to

call Backpage and say "No, no, put that back up. That's our

ad. That's a police add. We're using you to catch the

wrongdoers." And Backpage put the ad back up.

So, now, if you're a normal, ordinary, regular person

and you're being told by Carl Ferrer and those running the

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day-to-day business that all these things are being done,

including people being convicted and sent to jail as a result

of witnesses that you paid for to go to court, would you

believe that you are promoting criminal activity or you are

helping to identify the perpetrator, identify the bad people

who are abusing the system? 

The internet is not going away. You can say to

yourself all day long that, no matter what system you have,

there will always be somebody who will figure out how to go

around it. It's just the nature of the beast, the nature of

the beast. But if you do the best you can to help the

authorities to not promote it, but to detect and punish those

who are abusing it, you aren't promoting prostitution.

There are a couple of schools of thought here. You're

going to hear from some groups that say, ah, well, we told

Backpage that there were prostitution ads on their site and

that they should close it down. And that's one school. Okay.

They like to talk about it. They're the desk people. Okay.

They make speeches. They write articles and they tell you

what's good for you, okay.

Then there's a second camp, and those are the police

authorities who are in the trench actually making a difference.

Actually making a difference. And they say we want you. We

want to use you. We want to use the internet to fight the

people abusing the internet.

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You'll find out that the FBI didn't want Backpage

taken down. You'll find out that, once Backpage was taken down

and closed, not only did those millions of people who said

nothing that was against the law get silenced, but what

happened is the bad people, if you will, went to other

websites, some overseas outside the jurisdiction of the U.S.

What does that mean? That means that, when police authorities

issue a subpoena to them, they're like, "Hi we're not in

America, sorry. (Imitates sound.) Here's your subpoena."

Mr. Bienert read some attaboys today, so to speak,

where police agencies said, "Wow, we can't believe how you

responded to us so quickly." We had some police agencies that

said, "You are our partners." "Our partners." So I ask you,

you have to have the intent to commit the crime. You have to

intend to make it go forward. If you had Mueller, the head of

the FBI, thanking you for what you're doing -- and that's the

proof that will be in this case -- and you have over a hundred

police agencies thanking you, calling you their partner and "we

couldn't do it without you," would you for one second, as a

reasonable person, think that you were promoting crime as

opposed to fighting crime?

And, of course, they want to dismiss all this. You

heard the comments: "Oh, this is just a facade. This is a

facade. They're waving the First Amendment and they're telling

you all this stuff that they did just so they can keep the

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money rolling. That's their thing." Well, you know what?

You're going to find out. Millions of dollars. And not just

one or two things, but, like, 10 different things. 

Oh, and then there's the -- you heard in the opening

comments, well, if you have a so-called possible prostitution

ad and it has a word in it or words that indicate or may

indicate prostitution, and you take the words out and you post

the ad, it's still prostitution. No. Think about it. If

those words are words that somebody who wants to commit a crime

are looking for and they're gone, that person isn't going to

commit a crime because the word that would have enticed them to

answer the ad is gone. It's gone. And so what you've done is

you've taken what's potentially an illegal ad and now you've

made it -- you've neutralized it. You've made it something

that that person out there who may have tried to commit a crime

isn't going to respond to it.

Think about it. If you had an ad that said handgun,

shotgun, rifle, machine gun for sale, well, we know machine gun

would be illegal, right? So that would be an illegal ad. Now

you take out the word "machine gun," what's left? It's a legal

ad at that point because the very thing that might have

triggered some wrongdoer is gone. It's gone.

So this case is about a number of people and whether

or not, based on what they were told -- and what was actually

happening, okay, so this wasn't just something where Carl said

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all the lawyers are telling us this and we're putting these

things on a website and we're sending people out to testify and

we're letting the police know all these other things. No, that

was actually happening. That was happening. That wasn't just

talk.

And people like Mike who aren't involved in the

day-to-day Backpage, why not rely? Is that unreasonable to

rely on? And you saw Mr. Bienert showed you some excerpts from

a number of different statements from police authorities.

You're going to find out that those actually happened.

So, now, if you're a regular, ordinary individual,

reasonable intelligence, and you're told that all these police

agencies are thanking you, do you think you're intending to

further illegal activity or are you helping to detect it?

So the First Amendment's preserved so that all those

people that I talked about when they shut Backpage down and all

the people that were posting for jobs and all the rest of it,

they all got silenced, well, Backpage and those people and all

of us are protected by allowing a website, but using the

website to detect and to punish the violators because, if

that's -- if that's the way it goes, everything has some

violator someplace. We're going to get rid of everything? 

So here's the situation. I have -- there's one

particular count here that's different, that's -- that only

involves Mike Lacey, and this is a so-called concealment money

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laundering count. And I'm going to tell you what the evidence

is here and, in the end, say this is ridiculous, okay. And

here's what it is. Concealment money laundering, the one thing

that it requires -- and Her Honor gave you this in the initial

instructions that we had -- it requires that money be moved or

whatever and concealed. Very important: concealed. Okay.

Very critical element: concealed.

Mr. Lacey established a trust for his two sons.

Several million dollars. And because every time some

government investigator -- you heard Mr. Bienert talked about

Dart and how he tried to shut down Master and Visa and all

that, and that the minute that these authorities show up, the

bankers run for the hills because they just don't want to be

part of that, okay. 

So Mr. Lacey wanted to put his money in a trust for

his sons in a place where, if some agent walked into a bank,

the bank wouldn't say "Oh, get out of here, take your stuff

back." All right. So at the time that he did it until this

very day, there's been no finding that that money is unlawful.

There is no order saying that he has to, in some way -- at the

time that he established his trust, there was no order that

said that he couldn't touch the money or do what he wanted with

it and so on.

So he hired lawyers. They put a trust together. They

sent the money to an investment group in Hungary. You might

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say, wait a minute, that's international. But the crime is

concealment international money laundering. And he never

concealed it because the evidence will show as follows: He had

his lawyers and his accountants, in writing, notify the 

United States government, through the IRS, exactly where the

money was, how much there was, who the beneficiaries were, who

the creator was, where the money came from, in writing. Notice

to the U.S. government of all the details. Concealment?

Revelation. Not concealment. Anybody can have money offshore

as long as they report that, and that's what he did.

And you will get to see the so-called FBAR which is

the form that you file that totally gives all the details of

the money transaction. And that's going to be the proof as to

that count; that it was in no way concealed.

So now we get to sort of the situation where I told

you Mike is a writer. He's an editor. And, after the one

point in time, he said that Backpage actually made prostitution

transparent. And what he meant by that, which is pretty

obvious, is that they kept records now of anything that they

suspected violated the law. They turned those records over to

the police. They -- oh, and here's another thing. They talk

about charging for the ads, okay. Guess where charging for the

ads came from? The Attorney Generals met with Craigslist and

said to Craigslist "We want you to charge for these adult ads

because it will create a paper trail that we can find and, if

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you follow the money, you find the people involved." Okay.

And I can just hear them in their summation saying "Yes, follow

the money and it comes over here to these guys." No. Follow

the money for the people who abuse the website.

And so they asked -- the Attorneys General asked that

the ads be charged for, and so that's what Craigslist did. And

the lawyers at Backpage said they want people to charge for the

ads so they have a trail, and that's what they did, and they

provided that trail to the authorities.

And you're going to find out that Carl Ferrer, the guy

with the keyboard running it day-to-day, they were responsive.

If, for example, any police agency called up -- and if they

called, by the way, they could get Carl directly because he was

the hands-on guy -- they either got Carl or they got 

Liz McDougall who was the attorney for Backpage, the company.

And they would call, Carl would answer the phone, and the

police officer could say "This ad is prostitution. Will you

take it down?"

And, in fact, we're going to find out that one police

officer tested whether or not they actually took it down, and

so he posted a fake ad and -- he posted two fake ads

actually -- one was for an old green couch and the other one

was supposedly a possible prostitution ad -- and then called

Carl and said -- well, first he called McDougall and got her

answering service. Then he called Carl, got Carl and told

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Carl, "Here's the ad. Here's what it is. I'm a police

officer, and it's prostitution."

And at one point, he was asked, "Well how do you know

it's prostitution?" because, when you see the ad, you see that

it in no way looks like that clearly. All right. And that's

one thing. One thing for sure: The only two people who know

for sure whether or not a prostitution act occurred are going

to be the two people who are in the room who -- somebody who

responded to the ad and met up with someone. And a lot of

times, you're going to find out that the ad is totally legal,

but when the person gets to the room, they are then

propositioned in the room. Well, that's not on them because

the ad was legal.

Anyway, so you're going to see where the police tested

out the system. And so they said, "This ad's illegal."

And McDougall asks, "Well, what's illegal about it?"

Because when you see it, it doesn't look -- you know, it

clearly doesn't show sex for money.

And instead of saying, "Ah," (makes sound), he goes,

"Oh, well, that's secret. I can't tell you that right now."

Yeah, because it was a legitimate question by the lawyer which

is "Wait a minute, I'm looking at this ad and it doesn't look

like it's illegal to me." Okay.

So, anyway, he calls and gets Carl. And Carl goes

"Just a second." Hears a click-click-click. Carl goes, "Oh,

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yeah, I found the ad and you also posted a couch ad." So, you

see, what they put in their system to link things, he found the

other ad.

And he goes, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right." He

goes, "But we know, but I can't tell you how we know, but

that's prostitution ad." Of course, it wasn't at all. He made

it up.

And so Carl said, "Okay, we're taking it right down."

So now this police officer decided, well, we're going

to test the system here and see whether or not he just paid me

lip service or whether he really took it down. And he goes

online and it's gone.

So he said, "Well, I'm going to try to repost it, only

I'm going to change a few things." Changes it. Guess what?

No ad. Well, I'm going to either use a different address or

use a different city. He tries three or four things. The ad

never gets reposted.

So, if you were somebody all about money, take it

down. As soon as it came up someplace else, hey, why not.

Didn't happen that way. They took it down. Took it down. In

place, in place. Guard, guardian things in place, if you will.

So now we get to this. And by the way, when Carl is

in Dallas running this whole thing, Mike never left Arizona.

Mike is an Arizona guy, family's here, and never had a reason

to be going with Carl because, obviously, he wasn't the guy

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that ran the website.

So now ask yourself this: You're going to have proof

absolutely that, when Craigslist closed "Adult," the abusers

moved to "Women Looking for Men," "Dating," all this stuff.

And you're going to find out also that others moved overseas

and you're going to find out that others moved to Facebook and

they moved to Twitter and they moved to TikTok.

Well, right now what happened is, when they said --

the government -- "The abusers are on Backpage. We're closing

Backpage," when the abusers moved to Facebook, are they going

to come in and close Facebook? When the abusers moved to

Twitter, are they going to close Twitter? When they moved to

TikTok, are they going to close TikTok? When will it end? Or

are these guys the real deal who say we can help you get the

ones responsible, the ones who are preying upon the young

women, who are forcing -- whatever they're doing, taking their

money. And a lot of people are, you know, consenting people

who are doing this stuff for a living and so on. Backpage

isn't trying to make them succeed. Backpage is doing

everything that they were doing, everything they could, to help

the police.

So the very last thing: If you're sitting here and

you have all these police agencies -- the FBI, the FBI's head

and everything else -- tell you what a great job you're doing,

do you have the knowledge and intent to commit a crime?

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I think the answer is clear. And I look forward to the

opportunity to share that again with you when we are done and

we've heard all the proof.

Please keep an open mind and understand that we will,

in fact, prove things in this case, even though we have no such

burden, because we're going to ask questions, bring things out

that we think you should know. And we'll rely on you all to

come up with the appropriate verdict after you've heard

everything in this case. These people are part of the

solution, the practical realistic solution, as opposed to

people who are trying to make crimes happen.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you.

(End of excerpt.)

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C E R T I F I C A T E 

I, BARBARA H. STOCKFORD, do hereby certify that I am

duly appointed and qualified to act as Official Court Reporter

for the United States District Court for the District of

Arizona.

I FURTHER CERTIFY that the foregoing pages constitute

a full, true, and accurate transcript of all of that portion of

the proceedings contained herein, had in the above-entitled

cause on the date specified therein, and that said transcript

was prepared under my direction and control.

DATED at Phoenix, Arizona, this 10th day of September 

2021. 

 

 /s/ Barbara H. Stockford 

 Barbara H. Stockford, RMR, CRR, CRC 

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