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Cityxguude
CityXGuide seized and shut down; owner indicted for sex trafficking
By Brandon Showalter , Senior Investigative Reporter
© 2022 The Christian Post, INC . All Rights Reserved.
The owner of CityXGuide, the website that users have described as having taken over where Backpage.com left off, has been indicted on sex trafficking charges and the site has been shut down.
According to the Justice Department on Friday, CityXGuide, a leading online source of ads for prostitution and trafficking, has been seized and the owner has been charged with 28 federal criminal counts.
Wilham Martono was indicted earlier this month on one count promotion of prostitution and reckless disregard of sex trafficking and on another separate count of interstate racketeering conspiracy, which means facilitating prostitution. Other charges included interstate transportation in aid of racketeering and money laundering. Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Secret Service arrested Martono last week.
Following his arrest, his website was officially seized and "replaced with a splash page notifying users that the website had been seized by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security pursuant to a warrant," according to a DOJ release.
“As soon as DOJ shut down one despicable site, another popped up to take its place,” said U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox.
“Like the owners of Backpage, this defendant made millions facilitating the online exploitation of women and children. The Justice Department will not rest until these sites are eliminated and their owners held accountable for their crimes.”
Martono reportedly gained over $21 million from several websites promoting prostitution and sex trafficking having registered the domain names for the sites the day after federal authorities seized Backpage.com, a site that was long known for its promotion and facilitating of prostitution and sex trafficking, including the exploitation of minors.
A 2017 U.S. Senate investigation report into Backpage showed that its company staff had manipulated its content to conceal instances of criminality like child sex trafficking. Such terms that site operators automatically stripped from trafficking ads before publication included “lolita,” “teenage,” “rape,” “young,” “amber alert,” “little girl,” “teen,” “fresh,” “innocent,” and “school girl.”
“This case is a harsh reminder of the ruthlessness of human traffickers and lengths to which they go, including victimizing women and children, to make a profit,” Ryan L. Spradlin, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations’ Dallas Field Office, said of the shutting down of CityXGuide and Martono arrest.
“HSI maintains its unwavering commitment to investigate these heinous crimes, rescue victims, and prosecute the offenders to the fullest extent of the law.”
The DOJ added that it had identified a number of minor victims in CityXGuide ads, including a 13-year-old girl who was recovered in North Texas in November.
Martono could face up to 25 years in federal prison if he is convicted.
He was charged in part under a relatively new federal law that President Donald Trump signed in 2018, called the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act-Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act, which occurred soon after the federal seizure of Backpage. The law enabled the federal government to prosecute websites that facilitate sex trafficking.
FOSTA-SESTA updated the existing law to clarify the nation's existing statutes, outlawing knowingly assisting, facilitating, or supporting sex trafficking. The law also amended Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to exclude enforcement of federal or state sex trafficking laws from its immunity.
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Posted by DomainGang on June 19, 2020, at 4:05 pm
The Department of Homeland Security has shut down two domain names involved in an online prostitution ring.
CityXGuide.com and .net , along with BodyRubShop.com bear the following image:
According to the indictment, the web sites’ operator netted more than $21 million off a suite of illicit websites promoting prostitution and sex trafficking:
Wilhan Martono, 46, was indicted on June 2 on one count of promotion of prostitution and reckless disregard of sex trafficking, one count of interstate racketeering conspiracy (facilitating prostitution), nine counts of interstate transportation in aid of racketeering (facilitating prostitution), and 17 counts of money laundering. He was arrested on June 17 in Fremont, California by Homeland Security Investigations and the United States Secret Service.
He allegedly registered the domain names for several of the sites just one day after the FBI shut down Backpage.com.
CityXGuide and its affiliated websites (Backpage.co, CAPleasures.com, and BodyRubShop.com, among others) allegedly allowed brothels, pimps, and prostitutes to post hundreds of thousands of advertisements for sexual services, which users could then filter by geography and preference.
Full details on this announcement on the DOJ web site.
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June 19, 2020 / 3:11 PM
/ CBS News

Prosecutors in Texas announced Friday that they have taken down one of the largest websites to replace Backpage.com, the defunct classified website that allowed advertisements for prostitution and child sex trafficking.
On Thursday, Wilhan Martono, 46, the owner and operator of several illicit websites that advertised prostitution around the world, was arrested on sex trafficking, money laundering and other related charges. His sites — CityXGuide.com and its affiliated websites, including 1Backpage.com — advertised prostitution, child sex trafficking and other illicit services. The online platforms he created contained hundreds of thousands of posts for "intimate activities" that users could filter by their location and interests.
During the investigation, law enforcement officers discovered correspondence between Martono and an advertiser who said the website was "taking over from where Backpage left off." In fact, court documents say that Martono registered the domain name for 1Backpage.com, CityXGuide.com and a half a dozen others the day after the FBI seized Backpage.com in April 2018.
"As soon as DOJ shut down one despicable site, another popped up to take its place," said U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox in a statement. "Like the owners of Backpage, this defendant made millions facilitating the online exploitation of women and children. The Justice Department will not rest until these sites are eliminated and their owners held accountable for their crimes."
Posts on Martono's websites included the trafficking of "numerous" minor victims, including a 13-year-old Jane Doe whom law enforcement recovered in North Texas in November 2019. She was advertised on CityXGuide.
Shortly after Martono's arrest, the Department of Homeland Security took down the website, replacing it with a page that said it had "been seized by the Department of Homeland Security," prosecutors said.
CityXGuide listed 14 "Favorite Cities," including Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, and Boston. All 14 cities ban prostitution, so Martono would try to cover up the money trail by using bitcoin or a third-party gift card reseller called CardCash. Advertisers would pay in gift cards from places like BestBuy, Walmart, Amazon, Lowes and others, and he then exchanged them, funneling the money into personal bank accounts. While working on the transactions, Martono took steps to hide his IP address by using a VPN. In total, prosecutors estimate Martono's enterprise earned him more than $21 million since 2018.
Martono was indicted on 28 counts by a federal grand jury earlier this month, and was arrested Thursday in California by Homeland Security Investigations and the Secret Service. If convicted he could be sentenced to up to 25 years in prison.

First published on June 19, 2020 / 3:11 PM

© 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright ©2022 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

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