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AP National

Backpage founder will face Arizona retrial on charges he participated in scheme to sell sex ads

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Published 6:42 PM

By JACQUES BILLEAUD
Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) — Federal prosecutors in Arizona will retry a co-founder of the lucrative classified site Backpage.com on dozens of prostitution facilitation and money laundering charges that allege he participated in a scheme to sell sex ads. A jury in mid-November convicted Michael Lacey of one count of international concealment money laundering. It acquitted him on another money laundering count and deadlocked on 84 other charges. That was Lacey’s second trial. A judge declared a mistrial in 2021 after concluding prosecutors had too many references to child sex trafficking in a case where no one faced such a charge. Prosecutors filed a notice of the retrial on Tuesday. Lacey’s lawyer had no immediate comment.

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