As editor of The Village Voice during the heyday of its lucrative sister company, Backpage.com—once the internet’s largest platform for prostitution and child sex trafficking—Ortega collected a salary bankrolled almost entirely by sexually explicit ad revenue from the site’s now-infamous adult services section.
He may not have trafficked anyone himself. But he defended those who did.
“Backpage and its executives made millions off the trafficking of victims.”
“The First Amendment was shouted down in the name of children,” Ortega wrote in The Village Voice in 2011, mocking anti-trafficking advocates. He called underage sex trafficking a “national fantasy” and claimed the scourge wasn’t real, likening it to “the last couple of mass panics,” and insisting that Backpage’s crimes and child trafficking itself were “nothing like what is being trumpeted.” He described the website’s creators, Michael Lacey and the late Jim Larkin, not as profiteers or enablers of exploitation, but as men “smart enough to start Backpage.com.”
Fourteen years, one FBI raid and multiple prison sentences later, the US Department of Justice has established a new benchmark in what might appropriately be called sufferer-centered restitution: The federal entity has launched the largest-ever victim compensation initiative in any human trafficking case in American history—ensuring that more than $200 million in forfeited assets, confiscated from Backpage’s owners and affiliates, will be distributed to survivors of the sex trafficking that was facilitated by the site between 2004 and 2018.
It’s a watershed moment for justice—at least for those who’ve waited years for restitution. But the glaring question remains: Why did Ortega walk free?
The answer lies not in a lack of proximity to the crime, but in the boundaries of the courtroom. Tony Ortega was never charged, likely because he didn’t hold an ownership stake in Backpage, but he served as the site’s most visible public apologist, using his platform to downplay trafficking and deflect criticism. He defended the profiteers. He ridiculed the victims. And he helped sanitize the image of a site that trafficked children.
On July 31, the DOJ announced that victims of trafficking who were advertised through Backpage may file for financial compensation via a new remission process, administered by Epiq, a legal and compliance services platform. Victims, their representatives or their estates (in the case of deceased victims) must file by February 2, 2026. Those eligible will receive payouts from the forfeited assets seized during the federal government’s yearslong prosecution of Backpage’s criminal network.
“Backpage and its executives made millions off the trafficking of victims,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew R. Galeotti. “Today’s announcement underscores the Department’s unwavering commitment to use forfeiture to take the profit out of crime and to compensate victims.”
That profit was vast. Over a 14-year period, Backpage generated more than $500 million in revenue, much of it from classified ads selling women and underage girls into forced sex. The assets the DOJ seized from Backpage and its beneficiaries ranged from cryptocurrency to real estate in San Francisco.
And in 2024, the site’s owners were sentenced to federal prison.
Michael Lacey, convicted of money laundering, received five years behind bars and a $3 million fine. His codefendants, Scott Spear and John “Jed” Brunst, each received 10-year sentences. Larkin, Ortega’s longtime benefactor and co-owner of Village Voice Media, died by suicide before trial.
That “team” extended beyond the executives now in prison. It included lawyers, marketers and, yes, reporters.
But while the DOJ’s compensation plan is being hailed as a landmark act of restorative justice, some anti-trafficking advocates say it fails to address the broader ecosystem of enablers—particularly those in media who cheered from the sidelines or provided cover while children were sold for sex.
Among those critics is Andrea Powell, founder and executive director of Karana Rising, an organization that advocates and cares for sex trafficking survivors. In an interview with Freedom Magazine, Powell criticized the omission of accountability for media figures like Ortega—even in the wake of the DOJ’s landmark compensation effort.
Part of the problem with the DOJ’s prosecution of Backpage was the ham-handed way in which the government introduced the idea of sex trafficking: Larkin and Lacey were charged not with sex trafficking but with money laundering and facilitating prostitution. Yet in the first trial, prosecutors invoked sex trafficking anyway—prompting the judge to declare a mistrial for introducing prejudicial material unrelated to the charges. When the case was retried, the pendulum swung the other way: Trafficking wasn’t mentioned at all. No victims testified. And thanks in part to the media narratives Tony Ortega helped shape, the full scope of Backpage’s human cost was kept out of court.
Tony Ortega, Powell believes, should have been held criminally liable for the role he played in encouraging the trafficking of women on Backpage. As editor-in-chief of Village Voice, Ortega publicly ridiculed victims and their advocates. When groups like the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children sounded alarms over Backpage’s role in trafficking minors, Ortega dismissed the concerns as “mass paranoia.” In one column, he blamed “underage users who violate our terms of use”—a staggering inversion of reality in which exploited teens were cast as rule-breakers, not victims.
Worse still, when Powell attempted to post a listing on Backpage offering support for trafficking victims, Ortega personally rejected the ad, she says. “Tony just hung himself,” she told Freedom. “He proved that Backpage, in reality, does control content,” undermining the platform’s longstanding legal defense that it bore no liability for the sex trafficking facilitated by its site because it was merely a “hands-off” publisher, not an active moderator of posted content.
For some survivors, the current DOJ initiative is vindication. “It is meaningful to be recognized,” Powell said, but “it doesn’t absolve anyone on the Backpage team of anything.”
That “team” extended beyond the executives now in prison. It included lawyers, marketers and, yes, reporters.
Ortega’s Village Voice tenure was subsidized by Backpage ad revenue. He didn’t just passively benefit—he crafted articles championing Backpage and glorifying the site’s founders as First Amendment martyrs, while dismissing the trauma of trafficking victims as exaggerated horror stories cooked up by pearl-clutching advocates and crusading prosecutors. In doing so, critics argue, he whitewashed the site’s crimes, giving Backpage a patina of legitimacy even as real children were being bought and sold for sex on its platform.
The Justice Department’s position is clear: Those who profited from Backpage sex trafficking must be held financially accountable. But the platform didn’t operate in a vacuum. Its survival depended on its network of defenders, including lawyers, lobbyists and members of the press. So if the traffickers can no longer profit from exploitation, why should those who helped sanitize and defend their business get to keep their cut?
Asset forfeiture law could, in theory, be extended to Tony Ortega if prosecutors can establish that his compensation came directly from illicit funds. That would be unprecedented—but not unthinkable. After all, the DOJ’s own Asset Forfeiture Program has returned over $12 billion to victims since 2000, targeting not just traffickers but those who aided them—financially or administratively.
And the argument for Ortega’s complicity isn’t just a moral one—it’s backed by hard evidence. His writing minimized the crime. His paycheck was built on the ads. And his articles helped Backpage cling to a veneer of credibility.
The DOJ’s compensation plan is a lifeline for survivors. Though it will never erase the abuse they suffered, it may offer some measure of stability—an acknowledgment that they were wronged and that society owes them redress.
Yet for many, healing remains complicated by the knowledge that not everyone who participated in their victimization has been held to account. For many survivors, that unresolved injustice isn’t just a lingering frustration—it’s a daily reminder that the system still protects the powerful who enabled their abuse. Media figures like Ortega remain visible and vocal, not to mention unrepentant. The same man who once called trafficking a “nonexistent epidemic” now positions himself as a self-styled critic of religious freedom, peddling outrage from behind a paywall while his former colleagues rot in prison.
“Their sentences should serve as a stark reminder,” said former Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, “that the Criminal Division and its law enforcement partners are committed to protecting victims and following the money to unmask those who exploit human beings for financial gain.”
Yes, the launch of the Backpage Remission Program is a milestone. It signals a long-overdue effort to return stolen dignity to the survivors of America’s darkest digital marketplace. But as the petitions begin to roll in, and as victims submit documentation of their abuse and loss, another reckoning must follow.
If the DOJ is truly committed to following the money, it may be time to look again at where Tony Ortega’s came from.
Because until every voice that enabled Backpage—every apologist, every denier, every well-compensated “editor”—is held accountable, the system that allowed the trafficking to flourish will never be fully dismantled.
Survivors deserve more than money. They deserve truth. And that means naming everyone who profited—not just those who got caught.
