Visa on Wednesday became the second major credit card company this week to stop allowing its card to be used to purchase adult ads on Backpage.com.
The decision came after a request from Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who wrote to both Visa and MasterCard earlier this week about his concerns that the ads are fueling the sex trade — including the trafficking of minors.
MasterCard agreed to remove its card earlier this week. American Express took such action early this year.
Backpage.com, a classified-ad website, refused to comment when reached about the sheriff’s initiative.
At a news conference announcing Visa’s decision Wednesday, Dart lashed out at Backpage.com and its refusal to acknowledge how pimps and traffickers use the ads in its adult section.
In his sharpest remarks, Dart criticized the company for suggesting, as it has in the past, that it partners with law enforcement to root out such traffic.
“That’s insane. To be honest with you, I have heard more thoughtful logic out of my 5-year-old,” Dart said at the downtown news conference. “They try to spin this thing where they are our biggest asset and they are helping us. I have often told them directly, we have never had any problems arresting prostitutes. The difficult part has always been the pimps and the traffickers, the ones who are the really evil people here.
“And now you have just set up this wall of anonymity they hide behind,” he added. “And somehow you’re helping us? … Here’s how you can help us — stop doing that.”
Late Tuesday afternoon, a MasterCard spokesman said in an email that after company officials heard from Dart, they contacted Backpage and have since terminated the use of its cards to purchase ads in the the adult ad section of the site.
“MasterCard has rules that prohibit our cards from being used for illegal or brand-damaging activities. When the activity is confirmed, we work with the merchant’s bank to resolve the situation,” spokesman Seth Eisen said in the email.
American Express made the same decision in earlier this year. Now with Visa’s decision, the remaining options for payment on Backpage.com include bitcoin, according to Dart’s office.
Dart did not approach the digital currency bitcoin because it is a significantly riskier and less reputable form of finance, and therefore not as likely to be fueling the trade, a spokesman said.
Backpage.com includes millions of user ads in a variety of categories — roommates, real estate and jobs, for example. But over the past several years the site has surpassed Craigslist as the focus of human trafficking concerns among law enforcement.
In April, Backpage published 1.4 million adult services ads across the country, with the company bringing in at least $9 million, the sheriff’s office said.
Meanwhile, since 2009, Cook County sheriff’s officers have made more than 800 arrests by using information supplied in the ads. Those include more than 50 arrests for sex trafficking, involuntary servitude or prostitution promotion.
Strong federal law protects web operators from being liable for what is posted on sites because doing so would be a threat to free speech and to a healthy exchange of ideas.
But that hasn’t stopped lawmakers from publicly targeting the sites’ owners and announcing new legislation that seeks to hold them accountable. Cook County prosecutors partnered with Sen. Mark Kirk last year on a federal law that would allow criminal charges against operators if they show “reckless disregard” for the crimes being committed as a result of the ads, including pimping, prostitution and kidnapping.
Former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Cramer called Dart’s move on Backpage a “progressive” way to get at the problem, considering how hard it would be to ever criminally charge the operators of the company.
“It’s hard to solve this problem under the criminal code,” said Cramer, who is head of the Chicago division of the private security company Kroll. “People are buying ads, and the owners of the website aren’t theoretically doing anything illegal. They are providing a forum.”
Cramer said the financial cost to the credit cards companies doesn’t amount to much, considering the concerns raised about sex trafficking on the site.
“In the scheme of things this is not even a rounding error for Visa and MasterCard,” he said. “And what company wants to be associated with these kinds of ads?”
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