The site’s CEO was arrested and charged with pimping in October.
SCREENSHOT
Backpage.com, a classified-advertising website that was launched in 2004, has been seized by the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the IRS, and several regional attorney generals offices, according to the site’s homepage. The homepage provided no reason as to why the site had been taken down, but mentioned that the Justice Department would be providing more information to the public on Friday evening. The site’s CEO, Carl Ferrer, was arrested and charged with pimping in October, and the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations produced a report in 2017 about Backpage’s “knowing facilitation of online sex trafficking.”
