Lawyers argue indicted Backpage employees sought to keep prostitution ads off the site
Attorneys say a former executive and two operations managers for the classified site Backpage
PHOENIX — A former executive and two operations managers for classified site Backpage.com worked vigorously to keep the platform free of ads for prostitution even as strategies on how to do so constantly shifted, their attorneys said Tuesday at a federal trial in Phoenix.
Defense lawyers for Scott Spear, Andrew Padilla and Joye Vaught had their turn to make opening statements against charges of facilitating prostitution and money laundering. They highlighted how all three made great efforts to work with authorities, whether it was by giving testimony, sharing key user information or taking calls in the middle of the night.
“Backpage was viewed in law enforcement as the most cooperative site,” said Bruce Feder, the attorney for former executive vice-president Spear. “They thought they were doing good. They wanted to get abusers off their site.”
Joy Bertrand described how Vaught “battled bad apples” for nine years. As the assistant operations manager, Vaught worked to keep ads that could be seen as proposing sex acts or were just “trashy” from being posted. Bertrand read from an email Vaught sent to a staff moderator in 2014 pointing out ads with several violations that had slipped through.
“She was proud of the job she had. She bragged about it,” Bertrand said. “As you see each piece of the government's evidence, please view it with skepticism.”
Padilla's attorney described how he rose from having an $11-per-hour job to becoming a full-time operations manager. At one point, he was helping oversee 200 site moderators out of an office in Dallas. But under Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer, the standards used to screen for potential
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