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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 5: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 4: For almost a decade, Backpage was the world's largest sex
Speaker 4: trafficking operation. Seven days a week, twenty four hours a day,
Speaker 4: in eight hundred cities throughout the world. Backpage ran thousands
Speaker 4: of listings advertising the sale of vulnerable young people for sex,
Speaker 4: reaping a cut off every transaction. The owners of the
Speaker 4: website raked in millions of dollars, but many of the
Speaker 4: people in the advertisements were children as young as twelve
Speaker 4: and forced into commercial sex trade through fear, violence, and coercion.
Speaker 4: In taking down back Page, veteran California prosecutor Maggie Crell
Speaker 4: tells the story of how she and her team prevailed
Speaker 4: against this sex trafficking monolith, beginning with her early career
Speaker 4: as a young da She shares the evolution of the
Speaker 4: anti human trafficking movement through a fascinating combination of memoir
Speaker 4: and legal insight. Crell reveals how she and her team
Speaker 4: started with the prosecution of street pimps and ultimately ended
Speaker 4: with the takedown of the largest purveyor of human trafficking
Speaker 4: in the world. She shares powerful stories of interviews with victims,
Speaker 4: sting operations, court cases, and the personal struggles that were
Speaker 4: necessary to bring back Page executives to justice. Finally, Krell
Speaker 4: examines the state of sex trafficking after Backpage and the
Speaker 4: crucial work that still remains. The book that we're featuring
Speaker 4: this evening is taking down back Page, fighting the world's
Speaker 4: largest sex trafficker, with my special guest, former prosecutor and author,
Speaker 4: Maggie Crell. Welcome to the program, and thank you so
Speaker 4: much for this interview. Maggie Crell, Thanks so much.
Speaker 2: Dan, Good evening, Good evening.
Speaker 4: Let's start off with the focus of this book. As
Speaker 4: you write early on in the book, tell us what
Speaker 4: the focus is of this book for.
Speaker 2: Us, Please, Yes, I wanted to write about sex traffic
Speaker 2: in the United States. I wanted readers to understand where
Speaker 2: it happens, how it happens, and who it impacts. I
Speaker 2: wanted readers to understand the devastating consequences of sex trafficking,
Speaker 2: and I wanted law enforcement and lawyers to have a
Speaker 2: roadmap to being part of the solution.
Speaker 4: You do talk about what this story is not about,
Speaker 4: So tell us what it's not related to in terms
Speaker 4: of sex work, right, I mean.
Speaker 2: Not all sex work out there is sex trafficking, and
Speaker 2: the term sex work and sex trafficking sometimes get conflated.
Speaker 2: You know, not every transaction is non consensual, but the
Speaker 2: focus of this book are the many, many cases where
Speaker 2: it wasn't consensual, and that's what we call rape, and
Speaker 2: the exchange of money doesn't change that. And so I
Speaker 2: wanted to focus on sex trafficking and sexual abuse and
Speaker 2: what we did to stop it.
Speaker 4: You said that you also saw firsthand the numerous rapes, robberies,
Speaker 4: and murders that occurred through Backpage.
Speaker 2: That's right. The commercial sex industry isn't safe, and you know,
Speaker 2: survivors and people out there are at more risk than
Speaker 2: the general population when it comes to robberies, rapes, and murders.
Speaker 4: You talked about the survivors who were part of the
Speaker 4: back Page case that we will be talking about right now,
Speaker 4: were forced into sex trafficking, and most of them as children.
Speaker 4: Their names have been changed to protect their privacy, and
Speaker 4: they were sold in multiple cities and sometimes in multiple states.
Speaker 4: Isn't that correct?
Speaker 2: That's right. You know, I interface with numerous survivors throughout
Speaker 2: my time as a prosecutor, in this case in other cases,
Speaker 2: and what they went through is unimaginable. They face really
Speaker 2: steep barriers to even coming forward to even talking to
Speaker 2: law enforcement. I applaud their courage, and you know, without
Speaker 2: them and them being willing to share their stories, there
Speaker 2: wouldn't be a case, a book, an anti human trafficking movement,
Speaker 2: and they're truly the leaders of all of this.
Speaker 4: You write about early on in this you were the
Speaker 4: prosecutor for the state of California, County of San Joaquin,
Speaker 4: and you write about December seventh, two thousand and four
Speaker 4: in the story you call Well on a story, the
Speaker 4: chapter you call entitled the Motel. Tell us about what
Speaker 4: you found out about this particular motel.
Speaker 2: Well, when I first started my career as a prosecutor,
Speaker 2: I was a deputy district attorney, and that's the local
Speaker 2: county office that prosecutes crime in that region. Although they
Speaker 2: are enforcing state law, and based on my experience in
Speaker 2: prosecuting some of the prostitution cases, I really that the
Speaker 2: prostitutes shouldn't be where they were. I saw them as victims.
Speaker 2: The narrative of them staring at me in orange jumpsuits
Speaker 2: being prosecuted for selling their bodies and the dead of
Speaker 2: night didn't fit, and I wanted to explore what we
Speaker 2: could do differently, who was helping these people, if anyone,
Speaker 2: why they were there, how it started, and what we
Speaker 2: could do to make it stop. And I was able
Speaker 2: to work up an investigation against the local motel that
Speaker 2: really had become the hub for commercial sex, and instead
Speaker 2: of helping these vulnerable teenagers that were literally being sold
Speaker 2: in his parking lot, it appeared that the owner of
Speaker 2: the motel was really just continuing to enable the commercial
Speaker 2: sex trade and clearly benefiting from it. Some of the
Speaker 2: evidence that we were able to obtain showed that he
Speaker 2: was actually handing out condoms and renting rooms to known predators.
Speaker 2: And so because based on that, we were able to
Speaker 2: kind of take systematic approach, So it wasn't about just
Speaker 2: one person, it was about shutting down a real hub
Speaker 2: of an industry in that area. And so shutting that
Speaker 2: motel was kind of my first dip in my career
Speaker 2: into making a case that's more systematic.
Speaker 4: You charged the motel owner with committing prostitution and pimping,
Speaker 4: and so as you say, you shut down this motel,
Speaker 4: But to your horror, what did you find about afterwards
Speaker 4: when this motel was shut down? What else did you find?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it did shut down one corridor of
Speaker 2: human trafficking. But as my career continued, and at the
Speaker 2: same time, the legal landscape around human trafficking was changing.
Speaker 2: In California, for example, it wasn't until two thousand and
Speaker 2: six that we first passed our human trafficking law. And
Speaker 2: you know, as this legal landscape is changing, I'm moving
Speaker 2: through my career doing bigger, more serious cases. And by
Speaker 2: the time I got to the Attorney General's office where
Speaker 2: I was a supervising Deputy Attorney General, the motel metamorphosized
Speaker 2: into a website and that was backpage dot Com.
Speaker 4: And you say that it was more lucrative, more prolific,
Speaker 4: and more evasive than the motel had ever been.
Speaker 2: That's right. You know, it wasn't sitting on a street
Speaker 2: corner where I could survey it, it was in cyberspace,
Speaker 2: and it was active in eight hundred cities around the world.
Speaker 4: What was your legal strategy You said it was the same.
Speaker 4: What was the legal strategy for this?
Speaker 2: The way the legal strategy was the same was it
Speaker 2: was about following the money and disrupting a system.
Speaker 4: Can you talk about Operation Wilted Flower for US?
Speaker 2: Sure, Operation Wilted Flower and is discussing the book, and
Speaker 2: it's basically an example of how we were innovative and
Speaker 2: used financial crimes to go after human trafficking. But it
Speaker 2: involved a ring of brothels that were sometimes residential brothels
Speaker 2: so just you know, looked like basic houses, but inside
Speaker 2: people were being sold for commercial sex. And then also
Speaker 2: some massage establishments that appeared to be regular massage establishments
Speaker 2: but were really brothels for commercial sex, and so we
Speaker 2: went after those. We went after those cases. We were
Speaker 2: able to infiltrate several trafficking rings that way, and we
Speaker 2: were able to again follow money and disrupt a system.
Speaker 4: You say that, you talk about the California Statutes was
Speaker 4: similar to the Federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, whichs been
Speaker 4: codified a few years before. You say, tell us about
Speaker 4: this law and the statute.
Speaker 2: Sure, most states do have statutes that nearor the federal law,
Speaker 2: and the federal law has evolved over time, started in
Speaker 2: the early two thousands, and it protects people from being
Speaker 2: trafficked by force, fear, or coercion. And I think coersions
Speaker 2: are really important word. And I'll say too because I
Speaker 2: know this is a true crime podcast and people are
Speaker 2: focused on gruesome and gory details and murders and all
Speaker 2: of that. But what we found with sex trafficking is
Speaker 2: a lot of the cases happened with coercion with force,
Speaker 2: but it's more manipulation. And you know, I think it's
Speaker 2: real important that that is part of the statute.
Speaker 4: You talk about that the law was inspired by a
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety five case in California. Ty garment worker escaped
Speaker 4: from a sweatshop in El Monte, a commercial city in
Speaker 4: La County. Tell us just this is a very illustrative example.
Speaker 4: Tell us about this person that escaped from the sweatshop.
Speaker 2: That's right. The modern human trafficking movement really started based
Speaker 2: on this heroic escape and the sharing of the story,
Speaker 2: and that brought about awareness and new laws aimed at
Speaker 2: human trafficking. So this was seventy or more people that
Speaker 2: were living in slave like conditions behind barbed wire at
Speaker 2: a sweatshop. This wasn't a sex trafficking case. This was
Speaker 2: a labor trafficking case. And I should flag that human
Speaker 2: trafficking is an umbrella term that encompasses both labor and sex.
Speaker 2: The point of it is that the person is not
Speaker 2: free to leave, and so it's actually not the nature
Speaker 2: of the work, whether it's sex or washing dishes or
Speaker 2: working in a garment factory. It's the fact that the
Speaker 2: person is being forced or being coerced and isn't free
Speaker 2: to leave. And that was certainly the case back in
Speaker 2: the tight the tai garment factory industry in the Los
Speaker 2: Angeles area in the early nineties.
Speaker 4: You jump ahead a little bit to twenty ten. You
Speaker 4: approached the chief of your division and proposed starting a
Speaker 4: new unit with someone named a mentor named Dave Drewliner
Speaker 4: that would focus on organized crime. What did you want
Speaker 4: to do by focusing on organized crime? What were you
Speaker 4: going to include in that organized crime effort?
Speaker 2: I really wanted a human trafficking unit. I knew we
Speaker 2: needed that, and I knew that that should be our focus.
Speaker 2: But I thought that organized crime was a broader term
Speaker 2: and perhaps I would be able to smuggle the human
Speaker 2: trafficking work into the unit.
Speaker 4: So what is the climate at that time in America
Speaker 4: in terms of consideration for sex trafficking, human trafficking, and
Speaker 4: then what happens in your own fight to be able
Speaker 4: to form this team and to make some meaningful prosecutions, the.
Speaker 2: Climate was tough. There were definitely survivors and advocates who
Speaker 2: were trying to raise awareness, but within the law enforcement community,
Speaker 2: there weren't a lot of cases that were being prosecuted.
Speaker 2: It was still sting operations where those selling their bodies
Speaker 2: for sex were being arrested or those buying informally called John's,
Speaker 2: but people who are buying sex purchasers of sex being
Speaker 2: arrested in sting operations. But there really wasn't an effort
Speaker 2: to go after the organized crime aspect of human trafficking,
Speaker 2: and there weren't a lot of resources, especially for survivors.
Speaker 4: You talk about a investigative genius name Ray Diaz, what
Speaker 4: did he develop ultimately that would help in this fight?
Speaker 2: Ideas is for sure an investigative genius, and I was
Speaker 2: lucky to be able to work with him on this
Speaker 2: case and on pretty much everything else I did at DJ.
Speaker 2: But he was really the brains behind Operation Wilted Flower,
Speaker 2: which he asked about a little while ago, and what
Speaker 2: he came up with was a strategy to get informants
Speaker 2: into these brothels and massage partlers that I mentioned, And
Speaker 2: so he was able to basically wire them up for
Speaker 2: video and audio and get them to infiltrate these brothels
Speaker 2: and bring back footage that showed the victims, you know,
Speaker 2: the suspects, and real audio about how the operation was working.
Speaker 2: He would have the informants pretend either that they were
Speaker 2: trying to be customers or that they were trying to
Speaker 2: set up a similar business and wanted to talk about
Speaker 2: rotating some of the victims. And he really did a
Speaker 2: tremendous job with it, and it ended up allowing us
Speaker 2: to bust several locations, offer services to survivors, and take
Speaker 2: some really bad actors out of the industry.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about an actual prosecution now, another one that
Speaker 4: you feature this Andrew Jordan charged with sex trafficking and
Speaker 4: an ed victim named Tasha. So let's talk as you
Speaker 4: do in the book tell us about Tasha and Andrew Jordan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that part of the book is important
Speaker 2: because I think it really lays out how sex trafficking
Speaker 2: happens in that case. It started with an ad where
Speaker 2: Tasha met Jordan and he manipulated her. At the time,
Speaker 2: she was really vulnerable. She was on her own, she
Speaker 2: was young, she needed money, she had some emotional challenges,
Speaker 2: and she presented with a lot of the vulnerabilities that
Speaker 2: are really common among victims. And Jordan used all of
Speaker 2: those vulnerabilities to his advantage. He completely pushed her into
Speaker 2: the sex trade, made her continue, and then really started
Speaker 2: requiring her to make a quota each night, tell him
Speaker 2: everything that happened. And you know, a few weeks in
Speaker 2: he was controlling her every move and that is the
Speaker 2: kind of coercive control that is typical of a trafficking case.
Speaker 2: So we laid all that out, We went to trial
Speaker 2: on that case. She was one of two victims of
Speaker 2: Jordan's and he was ultimately convicted at the end.
Speaker 4: Now that gives you some confidence, and but what does
Speaker 4: happen as a result of that prosecution.
Speaker 2: As a result of that prosecution, he was convicted of
Speaker 2: two counts of sex trafficking as well as I believe
Speaker 2: assault in domestic violence, and he was sentenced to a
Speaker 2: prison term in California.
Speaker 4: What about the concept of aiding and a betting and
Speaker 4: how does it relate to this? And you talk about
Speaker 4: in two thy and thirteen a.
Speaker 2: Really important concept in criminal law in California and everywhere else.
Speaker 2: It's the idea that when somebody is responsible for a crime,
Speaker 2: it's not just the principal who goes in and uses
Speaker 2: the gun and takes the money. It's everybody who knowingly
Speaker 2: helped set it up. So you know, if it's a
Speaker 2: convenience store robbery, you have the person that drove there,
Speaker 2: you have the person that provided the gun. You have
Speaker 2: the person that played lookout, you have the person that
Speaker 2: drove the getaway car. You have a number of people
Speaker 2: who may have been involved in some way, and as
Speaker 2: long as they do so knowingly with that same intent
Speaker 2: to rob the convenience store, they are legally on the hook.
Speaker 2: And what's important about human trafficking and what we learned
Speaker 2: from the other cases is that most of these defendants
Speaker 2: aren't acting on their own. They're getting some help. And
Speaker 2: in the case of backpage back Page was the one
Speaker 2: that was helping.
Speaker 4: You talk about back Page in eight hundred cities, and
Speaker 4: you talk about twenty twelve, human trafficking was recognized as
Speaker 4: the world's second largest criminal business, with only the manufacturer
Speaker 4: of sale of drugs being more so. But you also write,
Speaker 4: and I've heard this expression before, you can only sell
Speaker 4: a drug once, but you can sell a young girl
Speaker 4: a child over and over and over again.
Speaker 2: I hate that expression, but yes, it's true. And unlike drugs,
Speaker 2: we're talking about people here, and it's really the most
Speaker 2: vulnerable people in our society.
Speaker 4: Very very interesting. You talk about a little bit later
Speaker 4: in the book how it came upon that to pass
Speaker 4: by Congress in nineteen ninety six the Communications Decency Act,
Speaker 4: which protected online platforms. This is an important issue to
Speaker 4: this story. Can you explain that for us?
Speaker 2: Yes, this is a really important issue. And you know,
Speaker 2: this kind of goes back to your question about what
Speaker 2: this what it was like prosecuting this motel versus this website,
Speaker 2: And the biggest difference is the Communications Decency Act, which
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with motels but has everything to
Speaker 2: do with protecting websites. And the idea of the law
Speaker 2: is to protect online platforms from liability when based on
Speaker 2: content posted by users. This law had protected back Page
Speaker 2: for many years. It protected back Page from civil suits
Speaker 2: and initially protected back Page from the case that my
Speaker 2: office filed.
Speaker 4: Now you say, before you have to go after Backpage,
Speaker 4: you needed an investigation plan, and one of those priorities
Speaker 4: was to be able to get a search warrant for emails.
Speaker 4: Tell us why that was so important and what was
Speaker 4: your investigation plan at that time?
Speaker 2: That's right, And I think you know, it's important to
Speaker 2: know just you know, what it really takes to investigate
Speaker 2: these kinds of cases. I mean, it's not the kind
Speaker 2: of thing that can be summed up in a you know,
Speaker 2: a one hour episode of Law and Order. It really
Speaker 2: takes extensive planning and resources and just building these cases
Speaker 2: step by step by step. I was trying to figure
Speaker 2: out who was running the company and how I knew
Speaker 2: who Some of the owners might be on paper, but
Speaker 2: I had no idea what their involvement were. Sometimes companies
Speaker 2: have shareholders who aren't involved at all and have no
Speaker 2: idea what's actually happening. Sometimes companies have investors. Sometimes companies
Speaker 2: have you know, day to day operators who are really,
Speaker 2: you know, running the illicit part of the business. So
Speaker 2: I needed a lot of information to even figure out
Speaker 2: who could be a suspect in this case. And this
Speaker 2: is really, you know, typical of how we approach our investigations.
Speaker 2: We looked for ways to get search warrants to find
Speaker 2: that may be useful to a criminal case. So in
Speaker 2: this case, we were looking and we knew that Carl
Speaker 2: Fair was the CEO, and we were looking to figure
Speaker 2: out whether we could get into his emails to figure
Speaker 2: out who he was communicating with and what he was
Speaker 2: communicating about. To run back Page.
Speaker 4: You talked about Lacey and Larkin. They had built a
Speaker 4: news media empire called New Times Media, and with that
Speaker 4: it's really helping the Backpage. They defended their right to
Speaker 4: run the world largest online brothel, didn't they.
Speaker 2: That's right they have. They've defended themselves. They see this
Speaker 2: as a free speech issue, and using the Communications Decency Act,
Speaker 2: they continued to build their empire.
Speaker 4: What's horrifying was that Larkin and Lacy own the company
Speaker 4: and would show up at meetings with the National Center
Speaker 4: for Missing and Exploited Children along with shareholder Don Moon.
Speaker 4: Tell us us a little bit about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this came up in the congressional investigation of Backpage.
Speaker 2: But the National Center for Missing Exploited Children actually reaches
Speaker 2: out and meets with back Page to talk about the
Speaker 2: fact that missing children were showing up on this website
Speaker 2: again and again. And National Center for Missing Exploited Children
Speaker 2: gets tip reports for missing kids and suspected commercially exploited kids,
Speaker 2: and these kids often are found on back Page or
Speaker 2: matched on back Page. And so the point of the meeting,
Speaker 2: according to the documents that were in the congressional report,
Speaker 2: was to kind of give back Page some guidance on
Speaker 2: how to how to basically stop kids from being sexually
Speaker 2: commercially exploited on the website. Back Page walked away from
Speaker 2: the table.
Speaker 4: Sure, you talk about Kamala Harris and her role, and
Speaker 4: her role will be more important as time goes on,
Speaker 4: But you also talk about an interesting group called Thorn.
Speaker 4: Tell us about Thorn, who's involved with Thorn and what
Speaker 4: they were specifically able to do.
Speaker 2: Yes, Thorn is an incredible nonprofit organization and what they've
Speaker 2: done is basically used use the Internet and use special
Speaker 2: software to attempt to minimize and interrupt the commercial sexual
Speaker 2: exploitation of children online. I was able to work with
Speaker 2: Thorn on one of our early operations in the backbase investigation.
Speaker 2: They used an analytics program to tag backpage posts that
Speaker 2: appeared more likely to be minors than adults. And I'll
Speaker 2: treface this by saying, one of the things that's really
Speaker 2: hard in these cases is you go through these ads
Speaker 2: and you see these pictures and I'm focused on the
Speaker 2: female section because that's our investigation, but there's there were
Speaker 2: there were boys and men on there as well. But
Speaker 2: you see these pictures of these girls and they could
Speaker 2: be sixteen or they could be twenty five, and you
Speaker 2: really don't know. You don't really know whether or not
Speaker 2: they're a minor from just looking at the pictures, but
Speaker 2: you look for clues. And some of the clues we
Speaker 2: looked for were it's a Bay Area ad and the
Speaker 2: phone numbers a Las Vegas area code, and then you
Speaker 2: look up that phone number and see several girls that
Speaker 2: are advertised using that phone number in different places. So
Speaker 2: clues like that give us an idea of whether it
Speaker 2: might be trafficking. And then just looking at the pictures
Speaker 2: and the background and the whether it's a hotel background,
Speaker 2: and that sort of thing casing together these cases. But
Speaker 2: what Thorn did was really to come up with an
Speaker 2: analytics program that could analyze that sort of data, could
Speaker 2: look for clues and how the ads were written and
Speaker 2: come back with information. So part of it was we
Speaker 2: were trying to test their programming to see whether it
Speaker 2: was useful or not. And then also we were trying
Speaker 2: to recover minor sex trafficking victims. So using information that
Speaker 2: they provided to us early on from their program, we
Speaker 2: were able to make contact with the people and the
Speaker 2: ads who they thought were most likely to be minors.
Speaker 4: You talk about Special Agent Brian Fischner being assigned to
Speaker 4: the case. With his help, you continued investigating back page
Speaker 4: structure and who were the company officers and where the
Speaker 4: day to live. How else do you continue with this
Speaker 4: pursuit of these people.
Speaker 2: That's right. Brian was so great to work with. He
Speaker 2: was really just so smart and diligent and worked so
Speaker 2: hard on this case. He had a lot of good ideas,
Speaker 2: and one of them was that he placed an ad
Speaker 2: on back page using an undercover officer picture, and he
Speaker 2: posted it. He used an undercover phone number and used
Speaker 2: an undercover credit card to purchase the ad. The point
Speaker 2: of this was a few things. One to be able
Speaker 2: to later trace the money too, to be able to
Speaker 2: see what kind of reception a regular ad would get.
Speaker 2: Were all the people calling for commercial sex or were
Speaker 2: some of them just calling for you know, other kinds
Speaker 2: of dating. We wanted to know the extent of it,
Speaker 2: and then we also wanted what happened when he asked
Speaker 2: to get it taken down. So within minutes of the
Speaker 2: ad being placed, the undercover officer that was managing the
Speaker 2: phone was getting hundreds of calls and texts, and the
Speaker 2: nature of them was purely sexual, very graphic, obviously calls
Speaker 2: for commercial sex. The people that were calling were expecting
Speaker 2: the person at the other end to fulfill all sorts
Speaker 2: of sexual desires and to meet up. So that was
Speaker 2: very clear. I think there were you know, eight hundred
Speaker 2: and six slimy phone calls and texts in a matter
Speaker 2: of a few days. And then Brian's next step was
Speaker 2: contacting Backpage to try and get the ad taken down.
Speaker 2: And so I'll continue a little bit with how that
Speaker 2: worked out, But basically Brian called Carl Fair, the CEO,
Speaker 2: on his cell phone, and said, you know, Essentially, we
Speaker 2: suspect that this is a sex trafficking ad. Brian caught
Speaker 2: off guard that he actually picked up the phone, but
Speaker 2: he did, and so they talked for a few minutes
Speaker 2: and then he said he'd send a follow up email,
Speaker 2: and that is how we established Carl Fair's email address,
Speaker 2: and he did end up he did end up taking
Speaker 2: down the ad, but that gave us a really useful
Speaker 2: clue for being able to initiate.
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Speaker 4: talking about the clue that would lead to the successful
Speaker 4: search warrant potentially for the emails of company executives and
Speaker 4: people involved in the data day operations. What was that
Speaker 4: clue that was discovered?
Speaker 2: That's right, We learned that so after Brian had talked
Speaker 2: to Carl fair we and received an email. We knew
Speaker 2: his email address, and then we learned that that email
Speaker 2: address was actually on a Google server. So rather than
Speaker 2: having to track down the website servers that in the
Speaker 2: email service that might exist for this company that we
Speaker 2: knew by this point was headquartered in Texas, and I
Speaker 2: think we knew that there was an office in Arizona
Speaker 2: and then some movement off seas, but we really weren't
Speaker 2: sure where in California we could connect the dots on this.
Speaker 2: But we discovered that Google actually held the email servers,
Speaker 2: and so we were able to send our search warrant
Speaker 2: right to Google.
Speaker 4: Tell us about November twenty fifteen, with the Attorney General
Speaker 4: executive team in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: So I think we skipped a little bit over and
Speaker 2: a little bit over Vice President Harris's role when she
Speaker 2: first came to the Attorney General's office. That was a
Speaker 2: major boost for anti trafficking efforts in the office. She
Speaker 2: wanted us to focus on human trafficking and it was
Speaker 2: definitely a top priority and that really gave me a
Speaker 2: lot of to start building a case against back Page.
Speaker 2: But when I got to that meeting in November twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: I felt like all of my hard work up until
Speaker 2: that point kind of meant nothing. It was really hard.
Speaker 2: The lawyers in the meeting were great, they were asking
Speaker 2: tough questions, but I didn't feel like they really got
Speaker 2: the case. And at the end of the meeting, I
Speaker 2: didn't get approval to file it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you talk about the Communications Decency Act again and
Speaker 4: how you have to prepare to be able to defend
Speaker 4: against it. How do you do that?
Speaker 2: That's right? So the Communications Decency Act isn't without exceptions.
Speaker 2: When the person that owns the website creates some of
Speaker 2: the content, they're not protected. And when the person that
Speaker 2: runs a website, I argued, is involved in criminality and
Speaker 2: is involved in this extent of criminality knowingly that that
Speaker 2: should be an exception too. But the court didn't agree
Speaker 2: with me on that point, and the court ultimately didn't
Speaker 2: find enough content creation to find them outside of the
Speaker 2: Communications Decency Act. But what I was preparing during this
Speaker 2: part was really to show how Backpage helped post these ads,
Speaker 2: the way they moderated the ads, the way they helped users,
Speaker 2: the way they gave law enforcement the bare minimum, but
Speaker 2: didn't really do anything to let law enforcement get in
Speaker 2: front of the problem. And so my theory was that
Speaker 2: developing these facts would take them out of the protection
Speaker 2: of the Communications Decency Act.
Speaker 4: Right, you find that Backpage assists traffickers and posting ads
Speaker 4: and victims without alerting law enforcement. You also talk about
Speaker 4: that staff would reach out to these users to offer
Speaker 4: special credits and ways to use bitcoin. Tell us more
Speaker 4: about the damaging and incriminating evidence that is found.
Speaker 2: Right, And back Page did a whole lot more to
Speaker 2: help users, and it did to assist law enforcement. Clearly,
Speaker 2: their business model was to continue to aggressively sell their product,
Speaker 2: and they use bitcoin and you know, other strategies to
Speaker 2: essentially be evasive and evade law enforcement. Their goal was
Speaker 2: to continue to build the world's top online brothel.
Speaker 4: You're meeting with victims routinely, and you mentioned a victim
Speaker 4: named Carissa, and she's an important person in this story
Speaker 4: as well. What does Carissa do for you or introduce you?
Speaker 4: To tell us about Carissa.
Speaker 2: I would never call Carissa Phelps a victim. She happens
Speaker 2: to be a survivor of sex trafficking, but she's also
Speaker 2: an author and a lawyer and a partner at a
Speaker 2: law firm and has had such an amazing career. I
Speaker 2: was inspired by her book that came out a while ago,
Speaker 2: but she was she was running, you know, several different
Speaker 2: organizations to help survivors of trafficking and help raise awareness
Speaker 2: within law enforcement. She was doing a bunch of trainings.
Speaker 2: So I met her through you know, a network of
Speaker 2: people that we're doing similar work, and she talked to
Speaker 2: me about back Page and you know, I already knew
Speaker 2: about it at the time, every prosecutor did, but she
Speaker 2: was she really gave me a push. I remember, you know,
Speaker 2: sitting with her in the conference room and she said,
Speaker 2: how can you let this website do this? How can
Speaker 2: people just be sold in an open marketplace on the internet.
Speaker 2: This happened on the corner. It would be shut down
Speaker 2: in a heartbeat. Why is this okay? And it really
Speaker 2: kind of pushed me and challenged me, and I knew
Speaker 2: it wasn't okay, and I was dedicated and determined to
Speaker 2: make a stop.
Speaker 4: You talk about Flight twenty one, and you talk about
Speaker 4: a task force if being formed or a new unit
Speaker 4: pardon me, being formed in Texas, and you called this
Speaker 4: person cursed the Melton tell us about that conversation.
Speaker 2: That's right, Well, I already told you, Dan that I
Speaker 2: had been trying to get a task force going in
Speaker 2: California since twenty ten. And I think a colleague, you know,
Speaker 2: sent me an article about Texas starting a unit just
Speaker 2: to sort of rib me a little bit that everybody
Speaker 2: else was able to do this, and I still hadn't.
Speaker 2: But I called Kirston Melton, who was the head of
Speaker 2: that unit, and I introduced myself and we started getting
Speaker 2: to know each other, and we were talking about different
Speaker 2: trends that we were seeing in our respective states, the
Speaker 2: growing gang involvement in sex trafficking, the way that people
Speaker 2: were being moved around, the challenges we were facing in
Speaker 2: our cases, the barriers that we saw for survivors for
Speaker 2: reporting and working with law enforcement, just the challenge of
Speaker 2: a lack of resources and a lack of support for survivors.
Speaker 2: And so we talked through all those things and really
Speaker 2: built a relationship, and eventually I confided in her that
Speaker 2: we were investigating Backpage, and she of course knew what
Speaker 2: it was, and she immediately wanted to help. And we
Speaker 2: talked about the fact that the headquarters was in Dallas,
Speaker 2: and there she was in Texas to get a different
Speaker 2: part of Texas, but still in Texas Texas Attorney General's office.
Speaker 2: So we made a pack to work together on the case,
Speaker 2: and she ended up being a tremendous help.
Speaker 4: You talk about text messages while you're on a vacation
Speaker 4: from Kamala Harris. What does she have to say when
Speaker 4: you finally get to.
Speaker 2: Talk to her, That's right. So we talked about my
Speaker 2: meeting in twenty fifteen where I didn't get the green light,
Speaker 2: and I should say that they didn't say not to
Speaker 2: keep investigating it. They definitely said keep going, but I
Speaker 2: just didn't know whether I would get approval to file
Speaker 2: the case. And time went on and I was very
Speaker 2: anxious to get this case charge. I felt like I
Speaker 2: was running out of time, and every night more people
Speaker 2: were being sold on this website. So I was on
Speaker 2: a little vacation, which was pretty rare for me at
Speaker 2: the time, and I was with my son actually kayaking
Speaker 2: in the lake, and my phone kept bringing I brought
Speaker 2: it with me because we were going to take some pictures,
Speaker 2: and I saw that it was the Chief Deputy and
Speaker 2: they kept calling them like I had better pick up.
Speaker 2: So I picked up and it was the actual Attorney General,
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris, which is pretty rare for her to call,
Speaker 2: to reach way down the ORG charge to call, but
Speaker 2: there she was. And you know, I'm trying to kayak.
Speaker 2: I've got my kid right there. I'm in a small
Speaker 2: boat that I'm trying not to tip. My phone receptions
Speaker 2: cutting out, so I'm a little bit panicked. I'm like
Speaker 2: folding the phone with my shoulder in my ear, and
Speaker 2: I'm paddling, paddling, paddling back to the dock. I jump
Speaker 2: out of the dock and basically wearing a bathing suit
Speaker 2: and no flip flocks, and I just start, you know,
Speaker 2: running up the up the dock and through the parking
Speaker 2: lot and up the hill to try and get some
Speaker 2: semblance of cell phone reception. And she's asking me a
Speaker 2: bunch of questions and I can understand about every fourth word,
Speaker 2: and my heart is pounding, for sure, because I've been
Speaker 2: waiting for this call for years by this point. But
Speaker 2: we have a really great conversation and we talked through
Speaker 2: the case, and at the end of the call, she says, go.
Speaker 4: Get them you right that. Meanwhile, the jury back in
Speaker 4: the Jordan case is he's guilty on all counts and
Speaker 4: most importantly, the jury believed the account of Alicia and Tasha.
Speaker 4: He got twenty one years, two counts of sex trafficking, pimping,
Speaker 4: and assault. How did that feel?
Speaker 2: That's right? It was really important. It's really important. I mean,
Speaker 2: these these survivors who have the courage to come to
Speaker 2: court and testify and face their abusers. It takes tremendous courage.
Speaker 2: And you know what sets them apart is that they
Speaker 2: were they were willing to do that, and it's a
Speaker 2: it's a really really hard thing. And the verdict tells
Speaker 2: them that the jury believes them and that what happened
Speaker 2: to them matters, that they matter, and that what happened
Speaker 2: to them was wrong and it's not okay, and you know,
Speaker 2: we can't we can't fix all the problems. I mean,
Speaker 2: the healing process is life long for many of these survivors.
Speaker 2: But that was an incredible step for them.
Speaker 4: You're right about Brian Fitchner again, and he goes to
Speaker 4: the judge for these crucial search warrants. Does the judge
Speaker 4: sign these warrants and for the restaurants?
Speaker 2: Yes, So after we got the green light, we were,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of scurrying to set everything up and
Speaker 2: figure out the operation. And by then we felt like
Speaker 2: we had built a solid case. Brian put together really
Speaker 2: strong arrest warrants and he went to the courthouse to
Speaker 2: see whether a judge would sign off on the arrest
Speaker 2: of Carl Ferrer and the two other owners.
Speaker 4: So there is a very dramatic part of this book
Speaker 4: that talks about capturing these people and making sure that
Speaker 4: no one gets to you know, it's all in secret,
Speaker 4: so people you don't want, you want to have this
Speaker 4: element of surprise with these people and is very exciting
Speaker 4: in terms of the extradition fight as well. But tell
Speaker 4: us a little bit just about what's happening at the
Speaker 4: same time in terms of the search warrant in Texas.
Speaker 2: Sure, so the judge in Sacramento did sign the arrest warrants.
Speaker 2: So I remember Brian Fickner texting me that he felt
Speaker 2: like he was holding a lottery ticket with these with
Speaker 2: these warrants, so those get put into a system whereever
Speaker 2: these defendants are, they are arrestable at that point. At
Speaker 2: that point Brian and I both went to Texas. We
Speaker 2: knew that Carl Ferrer was arriving on flight twenty one,
Speaker 2: which was a flight from the Netherlands where he had
Speaker 2: been to Houston Hobby Lobby Airport. That was the longest
Speaker 2: flight of my life that I was never on. Ryan
Speaker 2: was in Houston at the airport. I was in Dallas, Texas,
Speaker 2: waiting to go into the headquarters of back Page. We
Speaker 2: had a search warrant that was signed by a Texas
Speaker 2: judge that Kirsta had worked on simultaneously, and the goal
Speaker 2: was to be able to search the offices once the
Speaker 2: defendants were already under arrest. We didn't want to go
Speaker 2: into the offices before Pharaoh was under arrest because if
Speaker 2: he found out, we thought there was a chance that
Speaker 2: he could flee and that every criminal case where you're
Speaker 2: doing this kind of work, you have to kind of
Speaker 2: think through worst case scenarios and figure out how to
Speaker 2: game plan. You have to worry about whether a suspect
Speaker 2: has evidence that they can destroy, whether through their cell
Speaker 2: phone or their laptop, and then you have to worry
Speaker 2: about whether there's any safety issues for you know, whether
Speaker 2: they might flee the country and be impossible to find.
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Speaker 4: Now you talk about a tentative ruling. Everyone is excited,
Speaker 4: but there's a tentative ruling, and what does this tentative
Speaker 4: ruling say to you tell you so, we brought so
Speaker 4: we were.
Speaker 2: Able to successfully extradite Calfarer. We had all three defendants
Speaker 2: in custody in a Sacramento County courtroom. They were charged
Speaker 2: with multiple felonies pimping and conspiracy. But very early on
Speaker 2: in the case, the defense moved to dismiss the case
Speaker 2: using the Communications Decency Act. I knew it was coming,
Speaker 2: thought it was well prepared for it, and I thought
Speaker 2: I had a wedding argument, but the judge clearly disagreed.
Speaker 2: The tentative ruling was a ruling basically dismissing our case.
Speaker 2: So I pulled myself together and went to court and
Speaker 2: argued as best I could. I thought I gave him
Speaker 2: some hooks to kind of hang his hat on and
Speaker 2: give us a ruling that would allow us to survive.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately I didn't. We you know, we got kicked
Speaker 2: out of court very early on in the case.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you talk about Right about twenty seventeen, the US
Speaker 4: Senate would issue a scathing report detailing how Backpage was
Speaker 4: trafficking children, so right that he would refer then the
Speaker 4: matter to the US Attorney General for criminal charges. And
Speaker 4: a year later the phenomena of the me too movement.
Speaker 4: So tell us how things change. Some things like you
Speaker 4: talk about Jeffrey Epstein's arrest and indictment, and then you
Speaker 4: talk about you were in contact with a person named
Speaker 4: Bassen Banafa, a forensic Auditor'll tell us about what happens
Speaker 4: as a result of this me too movement and shifting
Speaker 4: societal attitude and the frential Sure.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, I felt like things were starting to shift,
Speaker 2: but they weren't shifting fast enough, not fast enough for
Speaker 2: these survivors that were suffering, not fast enough for me
Speaker 2: in my case. And I was I remember just sitting
Speaker 2: in my office just really crushed that our case had
Speaker 2: been dismissed and I was trying to figure out how
Speaker 2: I could put it back together. But Assome Binoffa had
Speaker 2: worked with me on other cases and is a forensic
Speaker 2: auditor and really really just such an incredibly hard worker
Speaker 2: and smart guy. He was a major asset in this case,
Speaker 2: and he helped me come up with a money laundering
Speaker 2: theory for the case. So we had gotten all of
Speaker 2: these bank records when we did the search warrants during
Speaker 2: the arrest, which was only a couple months before this dismissal,
Speaker 2: so we started putting together the bank records and building
Speaker 2: a money laundering case, and that's ultimately how we prevailed.
Speaker 2: So two days before Christmas in twenty sixteen, about two
Speaker 2: months after the case had been dismissed, we recharged it
Speaker 2: as a money launder in case. New evidence, new theory,
Speaker 2: new judge, And that's ultimately how we were successful.
Speaker 3: And what was the.
Speaker 4: Result of this success in terms of backpage, in terms
Speaker 4: of prosecution of those involved.
Speaker 2: So I think you alluded to this. We ended up
Speaker 2: based on a number of factors and things going on
Speaker 2: now with the congressional report. But the US Attorney's Office
Speaker 2: also got involved in the case. They had been investigating
Speaker 2: as well, and in a joint operation in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: the federal government, the FBI, the US Attorney in a
Speaker 2: joint operation with the Texas AG and our office, the
Speaker 2: California Attorney General's Office did a joint takedown of the website.
Speaker 2: So the website was actually seized. There's a message on
Speaker 2: there still that says that this website has been seized,
Speaker 2: and that was just a huge moment. It meant that
Speaker 2: no one else would be able to be sold on
Speaker 2: that despicable website.
Speaker 4: You also write about President and Trump signing a law
Speaker 4: creating an exemption to the CDA for sex trafficking.
Speaker 2: That's right. While all of this was going on and
Speaker 2: I was slogging it out in court over the Communications
Speaker 2: Decency Act in Washington, d C. A group of dedicated
Speaker 2: senators and congress people and their teams were sorting through
Speaker 2: ways to fix the Communications Decency Act to clarify that
Speaker 2: it doesn't shield those that are knowingly facilitating sex trafficking.
Speaker 2: That was known as the fastest sess the amendment, and
Speaker 2: it was signed in twenty eighteen, during the same couple
Speaker 2: of weeks that the website was shut down and the
Speaker 2: owner or the CEO, Carl Fair Backpage, led guilty to
Speaker 2: multiple charges.
Speaker 4: You talk about the media circus along the way here.
Speaker 4: What was the media's reaction. You talk about a change
Speaker 4: in sort of their narrative and also just the public response.
Speaker 2: It was a tough case. I mean, I felt like
Speaker 2: it wasn't like the topic wasn't well understood. The point
Speaker 2: of our charges weren't well understood when they were first filed.
Speaker 2: But I think there was a real changing of the
Speaker 2: guard on. That part of the reason for the case
Speaker 2: and the book, and it's definitely a goal of the
Speaker 2: movement as well, is to raise awareness and make sure
Speaker 2: people understand what human trafficking really looks like, that the
Speaker 2: people and the ads are real people, that many of
Speaker 2: them don't want to be there, and that many of
Speaker 2: them were children.
Speaker 4: You talk about a couple of those children, Leslie and
Speaker 4: another young girl, just as an example, a real example.
Speaker 4: Some of this stuff is clinical and we talk about
Speaker 4: the statutes, but the real people involved and some of
Speaker 4: these are really very tragic cases. So could you tell
Speaker 4: us about Leslie and the other young girl.
Speaker 2: I mean, the people involved are really the heart of
Speaker 2: the heart of the work. I mean it started with
Speaker 2: the people that were able to escape from the garment industry,
Speaker 2: and you know it's still going on with people who
Speaker 2: are being commercially sexually exploited today. So Leslie was one
Speaker 2: of the victims that we met with along the way.
Speaker 2: She and her little sister were trafficked as children, as teenagers,
Speaker 2: and they had an abusive pimp, but wasn't the kind
Speaker 2: of thing where they were forced with violence. They were
Speaker 2: really coerced because they didn't have anywhere else to go,
Speaker 2: and they were afraid, and they had a number of
Speaker 2: vulnerability factors, such as having to run away from abusive homes,
Speaker 2: not having a real positive relationship with family, and just
Speaker 2: all these factors made them really vulnerable to a manipulative trafficker.
Speaker 2: We still see this kind of dynamics out there every day,
Speaker 2: and it's just this lopsided relationship where a person is
Speaker 2: coerced and forced and sometimes with physical force, but sometimes
Speaker 2: just psychological manipulation, and then they end up selling their
Speaker 2: body for somebody else's benefit.
Speaker 4: You talk about the result, the actual tangible results of
Speaker 4: Backpage being taken down on prostitution and demand, tell us
Speaker 4: about that.
Speaker 2: That's right. There were some studies done right after the
Speaker 2: site was shut down, and it showed that there was
Speaker 2: a real plunge in sex trafficking at that point and
Speaker 2: in demand. I mean, I have to say that, you know,
Speaker 2: after a two year pandemic and everything that's been going
Speaker 2: on online, I can't say that shutting down one website,
Speaker 2: you know, really ended sex trafficking. But I know that
Speaker 2: it was a step in the right direction. I know
Speaker 2: that it sent a major message and it certainly helped
Speaker 2: the people who were trafficked on that site.
Speaker 4: Do you think it would make a serious deterrent for
Speaker 4: people that to form organizations and companies like Backpage?
Speaker 2: I certainly hope.
Speaker 4: So what else did you find as the aftermath of
Speaker 4: all of this. We talk about Brian Epstein, and people
Speaker 4: know that he was previously not being wasn't able to
Speaker 4: be successfully prosecuted or indicted, and then there was So
Speaker 4: this me too movement is a seismic shift in attitude?
Speaker 4: Is this evolution? Are you happy with what has happened
Speaker 4: from the results of your work and the results of
Speaker 4: everything that's happened federally and these charges and this story.
Speaker 2: Yes, I am really proud of this work. I think
Speaker 2: we're definitely moving in the right direction, you know, not
Speaker 2: because of me and my case, but because of the
Speaker 2: courage of so many people that have come forward and
Speaker 2: shared their stories and spoken out and spoken up for
Speaker 2: dignity for all of us. I know that we still
Speaker 2: have a long way to go, but just looking back
Speaker 2: on the human trafficking movement and all that's been accomplished
Speaker 2: in the last twenty years, I think it's a really
Speaker 2: incredible movement.
Speaker 4: You have a photo of the three culprits in a
Speaker 4: cage in court during the trial, and you write about
Speaker 4: actually getting to see this Carl Fair for the first time.
Speaker 4: What was that like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember when I first saw him in court.
Speaker 2: It was in Houston, Texas. I hadn't slept in a
Speaker 2: couple of days because you know, we've been traveling, and
Speaker 2: then we had been searching his office and then you know,
Speaker 2: right before his court appearance, I learned that he was
Speaker 2: trying to get out of custody and I needed to
Speaker 2: go to court in order to convince the judge to
Speaker 2: extra write him to California. So I was running on
Speaker 2: sheer adrenaline and I came to court and that's when
Speaker 2: I saw him for the first time. And there he
Speaker 2: was lined up in an orange jumpsuit, you know, in
Speaker 2: a row full of people who were charged with serious
Speaker 2: crimes just like him. And it was just a moment
Speaker 2: that really struck me, that this moment where everything kind
Speaker 2: of caught up and no matter who he was and
Speaker 2: how much money he had and what he had been doing,
Speaker 2: he wasn't going to get away with it. And you know,
Speaker 2: I'd imagine that's how people felt last week when Maxwell
Speaker 2: got convicted. Of facilitating sex trafficking. Absolutely, she was Epstein's accomplice,
Speaker 2: of course.
Speaker 4: And all along the way in this book, you do
Speaker 4: take and give credit to the advocates, the more than
Speaker 4: courageous victims that helped and gave valuable information, and so
Speaker 4: you share that information, those victories. Some of the first
Speaker 4: people you call to tell of the victories and these challenges.
Speaker 4: It's very interesting everybody's contribution to this fight to taking
Speaker 4: down back Page.
Speaker 2: That's right. It was truly a team effort. I worked
Speaker 2: with really great agents. My co counsel on the case,
Speaker 2: Randy Mailman, is an incredible lawyer, and I was so
Speaker 2: lucky to be paired with her. So it definitely was
Speaker 2: a team effort and has been a team effort. I'm
Speaker 2: going to share too, a message I just got today
Speaker 2: from someone I've never met before, but she must have
Speaker 2: gotten she must have seen information about the book coming out,
Speaker 2: and she wrote, you saved my life. I'm twenty four now,
Speaker 2: but I was very young, impressionable, and a lost teenager
Speaker 2: being advertised on the back page, and you are the
Speaker 2: reason my life had a switch after the site got
Speaker 2: shut down. I don't know why you randomly showed up
Speaker 2: on my Twitter page. But the nightmare of back Page
Speaker 2: is over, and I thank you. It's still left its
Speaker 2: scars and issues in my life, but I finally don't
Speaker 2: have to do that kind of stuff anymore. I think
Speaker 2: that really stums up what a lot of survivors felt,
Speaker 2: that sense of relief when the site was shut down.
Speaker 2: It enabled people to move on with their lives and
Speaker 2: to feel seen and instead of a website that just
Speaker 2: continued to normalize sexual abuse, the fact that that was
Speaker 2: shut down, that the government said that was wrong and
Speaker 2: we're not going to tolerate that. We're going all the
Speaker 2: other way, was a really meaningful step in the right direction.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. I want to thank you so much Maggie Crell
Speaker 4: for coming on and talking about your incredible book taking
Speaker 4: down back Page, fighting the world's largest sex trafficker. For
Speaker 4: those people that might want to check out your website,
Speaker 4: can you tell us about that and they can find
Speaker 4: out more information about this book.
Speaker 2: Sure. The book is available on bookshop dot com or
Speaker 2: Amazon or your local bookstore pretty much anywhere the books
Speaker 2: are sold, and it's coming out January eleventh. My website
Speaker 2: is Maggie m agg Y Crell kr Ell All one
Speaker 2: word dot com, so www dot Maggie Crell dot com,
Speaker 2: and there's some information about me and the book and
Speaker 2: some of the reviews we've been getting.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much taking down backpage fighting the world's
Speaker 4: largest sex trafficker. Maggie Crell, thank you so much, have
Speaker 4: a great evening, good night you too.
Speaker 2: Thank you.