Former California prosecutor Maggy Krell has been taking an undeserved victory lap over the demise of Backpage. She has a new book called Taking Down Backpage: Fighting the World's Largest Sex Trafficker, and Krell has been making the media rounds promoting it. But the case Krell worked on didn't really "take down Backpage" or prove the site guilty of sex trafficking. Indeed, the pimping charges she helped bring against Backpage's CEO and founders were twice thrown out of court.
Krell was part of a 2016 case signed off on by future Vice President Kamala Harris, who was then California's attorney general and was running for the U.S. Senate. A few days before the 2016 election, Harris and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton earned nationwide press when they charged Backpage CEO Carl Ferrar and company founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin with pimping and conspiracy to commit pimping.
