Former Backpage CEO gets three years of probation after testifying at trial about site's sex ads

PHOENIX (AP) — The former chief executive for the now-shuttered classified site Backpage.com was sentenced Tuesday to three years of probation and ordered to pay $40,000 in restitution for conspiring to facilitate prostitution by selling sex ads.

The judge also declined a prosecutor’s request to sentence the company’s former sale director to probation or order him to pay restitution, since he had pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge.

U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa commended former CEO Carl Ferrer and sales director Dan Hyer for acknowledging their crime early in the case and for their extensive cooperation with prosecutors in revealing how Backpage operated.

Humetewa said Ferrer “shed light on dark operations in our computer world.” The punishments handed out by the judge were less than what a prosecutor requested.

Ferrer and Hyer were the last defendants to be sentenced in a sprawling seven-year federal case in Arizona against Backpage’s operators. Ferrer still faces sentencing for state money laundering convictions in California.

The former chief executive and sales director were key witnesses for the government against a company founder during the 2023 trial.

Backpage founder Michael Lacey was convicted of a single count of international concealment money laundering and sentenced to five years in prison and fined $3 million, though he remains free while he pursues an appeal. Chief financial officer John Brunst and executive vice president Scott Spear are each serving 10-year sentences for conspiracy and money laundering convictions.

Prosecutors had argued that Backpage’s operators ignored warnings to stop running prostitution ads, some involving children. The operators were accused of giving free ads to sex workers and cultivating arrangements with others who worked in the industry to get them to post ads with the company.

Backpage’s operators said they never allowed ads for sex and made an effort to try to delete such ads by assigning employees to remove them and creating automated tools. Their legal team maintained the content on the site was protected by the First Amendment.

In pleading guilty, Ferrer acknowledged knowing a majority of Backpage’s revenues came from escort ads, conspiring to sanitize ads by removing photos and words that were indicative of prostitution and publishing a revised version of the notices.

In sentencing memos, both the prosecutor and Ferrer’s attorneys say he helped shut down the site through his cooperation. His lawyers say Ferrer provided evidence linking defendants to the criminal enterprise and testified that Backpage’s increase in revenue stemmed mostly from prostitution.

On Tuesday, Ferrer apologized for the harm to victims and said his involvement in Backpage will cause him shame and regret for the rest of his life. “I understand what the company did was wrong and what I did was wrong," Ferrer said.

Hyer has previously acknowledged participating in a scheme to give free ads to sex workers in a bid to draw them away from competitors and win over their future business.

At sentencing, Hyer reflected on his struggle in trying to forgive himself for his actions. “It’s hard to look myself in the mirror,” he said.

Lacey’s first trial in 2021 ended in a mistrial when another judge concluded prosecutors had too many references to child sex trafficking in a case where no one faced such a charge.

Before launching Backpage, Lacey founded the Phoenix New Times weekly newspaper with James Larkin, who was charged in the case and died by suicide in 2023 just before the second trial against Backpage’s operators was scheduled to begin.

Lacey and Larkin held ownership interests in other weeklies such as The Village Voice and ultimately sold their newspapers in 2013. But they held onto Backpage, which authorities say generated $500 million in prostitution-related revenue from its inception in 2004 until 2018, when the government shut it down.

A U.S. Government Accountability Office report released in June 2021 said the FBI’s ability to identify victims and sex traffickers had decreased significantly after Backpage was seized by the government, because law enforcement was familiar with the site and Backpage was generally responsive to requests for information.

FILE -- In this Jan. 10, 2017 file photo Backpage.com CEO Carl Ferrer appears before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent subcommittee on Investigations looking into Backpage.com. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. flu infections showed signs of a slight decline last week, but health officials say it is not clear that this severe flu season has peaked.

New government data posted Friday — for flu activity through last week — showed declines in medical office visits due to flu-like illness and in the number of states reporting high flu activity.

However, some measures show this season is already surpassing the flu epidemic of last winter, one of the harshest in recent history. And experts believe there is more suffering ahead.

“This is going to be a long, hard flu season,” New York State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald said, in a statement Friday.

One type of flu virus, called A H3N2, historically has caused the most hospitalizations and deaths in older people. So far this season, that is the type most frequently reported. Even more concerning, more than 91% of the H3N2 infections analyzed were a new version — known as the subclade K variant — that differs from the strain in this year’s flu shots.

The last flu season saw the highest overall flu hospitalization rate since the H1N1 flu pandemic 15 years ago. And child flu deaths reached 289, the worst recorded for any U.S. flu season this century — including that H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic of 2009-2010.

So far this season, there have been at least 15 million flu illnesses and 180,000 hospitalizations, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. It also estimates there have been 7,400 deaths, including the deaths of at least 17 children.

Last week, 44 states reported high flu activity, down slightly from the week before. However, flu deaths and hospitalizations rose.

Determining exactly how flu season is going can be particularly tricky around the holidays. Schools are closed, and many people are traveling. Some people may be less likely to see a doctor, deciding to just suffer at home. Others may be more likely to go.

Also, some seasons see a surge in cases, then a decline, and then a second surge.

For years, federal health officials joined doctors' groups in recommending that everyone 6 months and older get an annual influenza vaccine. The shots may not prevent all symptoms but can prevent many infections from becoming severe, experts say.

But federal health officials on Monday announced they will no longer recommend flu vaccinations for U.S. children, saying it is a decision parents and patients should make in consultation with their doctors.

“I can’t begin to express how concerned we are about the future health of the children in this country, who already have been unnecessarily dying from the flu — a vaccine preventable disease,” said Michele Slafkosky, executive director of an advocacy organization called Families Fighting Flu.

“Now, with added confusion for parents and health care providers about childhood vaccines, I fear that flu seasons to come could be even more deadly for our youngest and most vulnerable," she said in a statement.

Flu is just one of a group of viruses that tend to strike more often in the winter. Hospitalizations from COVID-19 and RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, also have been rising in recent weeks — though were not diagnosed nearly as often as flu infections, according to other federal data.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

FILE - Pharmacy manager Aylen Amestoy administers a patient with a seasonal flu vaccine at a CVS Pharmacy in Miami, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)