Backpage founder will face Arizona retrial on charges he participated in scheme to sell sex ads
Federal prosecutors in Arizona will retry a co-founder of the lucrative classified site Backpage
PHOENIX — Federal prosecutors in Arizona said Tuesday they will retry a co-founder of the lucrative classified site Backpage.com on dozens of prostitution facilitation and money laundering charges that alleged he participated in a scheme to sell sex ads.
A jury in mid-November 2023 convicted Michael Lacey of one count of international concealment money laundering, acquitted him on another money laundering count and deadlocked on 84 other charges.
That marked the second trial for Lacey, whose first trial ended in a mistrial after a judge concluded in 2021 that prosecutors had too many references to child sex trafficking in a case where no one faced such a charge.
On Tuesday, prosecutors filed a formal notice of retrial in federal court in Phoenix in compliance with a deadline U.S. Judge Diane Humetewa set in an order on Jan. 10.
“The United States files this notice of intent to retry Defendant Michael Lacy on the 84 counts for which the jury was unable to reach a verdict and requests that the court set the case for retrial,” U.S. Attorney Gary Restaino wrote in the five-page notice.
Lacey's lawyer, Paul Cambria, declined comment just after the notice was filed late Tuesday.
“I have none at the moment,” he told The Associated Press.
Lacey, 75, was previously tried on a total of 86 criminal counts in the case against him and four other Backpage employees.
John Brunst, Backpage’s chief financial officer, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to violate the Travel Act — a federal law barring the use of interstate commerce to facilitate prostitution in violation of state laws — and more than 30 money laundering counts.
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