On September 9, 2025, in a Phoenix federal courtroom, the long saga of Backpage.com—the infamous classified advertising website shuttered by the government in 2018—reached a dramatic coda. Carl Ferrer, the site’s former chief executive, was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay $40,000 in restitution after admitting to conspiring to facilitate prostitution by selling sex ads. The sentence, handed down by U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa, capped a sprawling seven-year federal case that has cast a harsh light on the intersection of technology, free speech, and the darker corners of the internet.
Judge Humetewa, in her remarks, acknowledged the gravity of the case but also commended Ferrer—and Dan Hyer, Backpage’s former sales director—for their early admissions of guilt and extensive cooperation with federal prosecutors. "Ferrer shed light on dark operations in our computer world," the judge remarked, according to the Associated Press. Their cooperation, she noted, was instrumental in revealing the true workings of Backpage.com, a site that prosecutors say generated roughly $500 million in prostitution-related revenue between its inception in 2004 and its government-mandated shutdown in 2018.
For Dan Hyer, the outcome was even more lenient. The judge declined a prosecutor’s request to sentence Hyer to probation or order him to pay restitution, citing his guilty plea to a conspiracy charge and his substantial cooperation. Both men, as the last of the defendants to be sentenced in the Arizona-based federal case, played pivotal roles as government witnesses, testifying against company founder Michael Lacey during his 2023 trial.
Ferrer’s legal woes, however, are not entirely behind him. He still faces sentencing for state money laundering convictions in California. But his willingness to cooperate with federal authorities—providing evidence that helped link other defendants to the criminal enterprise and testifying about Backpage’s revenue streams—was cited as a key factor in the relatively light sentence. In court, Ferrer expressed deep remorse. "I understand what the company did was wrong and what I did was wrong," he said, adding that his involvement will cause him shame and regret for the rest of his life.
Hyer, too, reflected on his actions, admitting to his role in a scheme to give free ads to sex workers in hopes of drawing them away from competitors and winning their future business. At sentencing, Hyer confessed to struggling with his own conscience: "It’s hard to look myself in the mirror," he said, as reported by the Associated Press.
The Backpage case has been a legal labyrinth, marked by twists, mistrials, and tragedy. Michael Lacey, the site’s founder, was convicted in 2023 of a single count of international concealment money laundering. He was sentenced to five years in prison and fined $3 million, but remains free while he appeals the verdict. Chief financial officer John Brunst and executive vice president Scott Spear are each serving 10-year sentences for conspiracy and money laundering convictions.
The prosecution’s case rested on a central argument: that Backpage’s operators knowingly facilitated prostitution, including some ads involving children, and ignored repeated warnings to stop. Prosecutors alleged that the company not only allowed such ads to proliferate, but actively courted business from sex workers, sometimes offering free ads and forging relationships with industry insiders to entice them to post on the site. According to court documents, Backpage’s business model was built on the back of these controversial ads, with Ferrer himself admitting that the majority of the company’s revenue came from escort listings.
Yet the defense maintained a different narrative. Backpage’s operators insisted they never allowed explicit sex ads on the site and made efforts to remove such content, both through dedicated employees and automated tools. They argued that the site’s content was protected by the First Amendment, a position that sparked intense debate about the limits of free speech in the digital age. In his guilty plea, Ferrer acknowledged that he and others conspired to "sanitize" ads—removing photos and words that were indicative of prostitution before publishing revised versions of the notices, a practice prosecutors said was designed to evade law enforcement scrutiny while still profiting from illegal activity.
The legal battle has not been without its share of controversy and heartbreak. Lacey’s first trial in 2021 ended in a mistrial after a judge ruled that prosecutors had made too many references to child sex trafficking—a charge that no one in the case actually faced. Meanwhile, James Larkin, co-founder of Backpage and the Phoenix New Times weekly newspaper, was himself charged and died by suicide in 2023, just before the second trial against the site’s operators was set to begin.
Lacey and Larkin, both prominent figures in alternative journalism, founded the Phoenix New Times before acquiring other weeklies like The Village Voice. They sold their newspaper holdings in 2013 but retained Backpage, which would ultimately become the focal point of a national debate over online platforms and their responsibility for user-generated content. Authorities have said that from 2004 to 2018, Backpage generated approximately $500 million in revenue from prostitution-related ads—a staggering sum that underscored the scale of the illicit activity facilitated through the site.
The shutdown of Backpage.com was hailed by many as a victory in the fight against sex trafficking, but it has also had unintended consequences. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report released in June 2021 found that the FBI’s ability to identify victims and sex traffickers had actually decreased significantly after the site was seized. The report noted that law enforcement agencies were familiar with Backpage and that the company was generally responsive to requests for information—an irony not lost on those who have followed the case closely.
As the dust settles on one of the most complex and closely watched cases in the history of internet law, questions remain about how best to balance the fight against exploitation with the need for transparency and cooperation from online platforms. For Ferrer and Hyer, the sentences handed down this week mark the end of a long legal journey, but the broader debate over online responsibility and free speech is far from over.
With the courtroom chapter closed, the legacy of Backpage.com continues to reverberate—through the lives of those involved, the victims affected, and the ongoing evolution of how society polices the digital world.
