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 (AP) — 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 70-day deadline the judge set in November.
