Hard to believe, but the Rentboy.com saga is still far from over. Federal officials are still trying to put the CEO away. But there’s some good news: our friends in Congress are getting involved.
Sean Patrick Maloney, an openly gay congressman from New York, has written a letter to the Department of Homeland Security and the Attorney General, demanding to know why they singled out Rentboy.com for prosecution.
“As you know, this website operated entirely out in the open for nearly two decades,” Maloney wrote. “I am deeply concerned that your investigators were more motivated by the nature and orientation of the sexual activity facilitated by Rentboy.com than whatever unremarkable offenses the website’s operators may have assisted.”
He adds, “in America, gay sex is not a crime.”
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Maloney is asking them to respond in writing to explain why they’ve targeted the site.
It’s hard to say exactly what motivated the government to attack one of the safest, most professionally run escort sites in the world. But if we had to guess, we might suspect that “money” played a role. The Department of Justice wants to keep millions of dollars that it took from the company — money that doesn’t belong to them, and was earned by honest hardworking people.
In the mean time, escorts have had to switch to less secure methods to continue working, which puts everyone at risk. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. The sooner the government gives up this attack on gay sex and provides restitution to Rentboy, the better.
James Rumsey
I can see why it was investigated on the face of things it looks like an online brothel.
Mykaels
More than likely, the CEO slipped up somewhere and gave them an easy opening on a case. Cases are long and expensive and public relations nightmares, so a lot of the times they ‘know’ criminal activity is there but if they cannot prove it outright, they wait.
Tobi
I don’t have that much sympathy for Rentboy. OK, gay sex might not be a crime, but they knew prostitution was illegal in NYC. They could easily have domiciled the company and servers in a country where prostitution isn’t a criminal offence, as other “rent” sites have done, Rentmen, Rentmasseur, etc. and still worked out of NYC.
DCguy
Ashley Madison got hacked, and some prominent conservatives were exposed.
Suddenly Rentboy is the target of a massive Federal investigation, massive overreaching charges are filed and they demand all of their servers, and in fact even offer to reduce charges if they hand over their servers?
Sounds like somebody in Congress got nervous their account would be exposed if the site was hacked and called in a favor from the FBI.
QJ201
The feds want the email addresses of all the clients that used the site. PERIOD.
Tobi
@DCguy & @QJ201: You didn’t have to give Rentboy any info. or your email address, you just contacted the men advertising on the site directly, by phone. If you have a look at rentmen.com you’ll get the idea, it’s set up the same.
Victor Barry
No. They did not get paid for any sex acts. They did not send people on dates. They made no deals to provide sex. They weren’t a brothel. They just posted ads. What people did, they did independently. Prostitution requires a specific agreement to provide a sexual act for money. Rent boy got paid to just post ads.
anxman
Give up this attack on prostitution. It’s not going anywhere. To quote the late, great George Carlin (paraphrased): Why is it illegal to sell something it’s legal to giveaway!
Paco
“The Department of Justice wants to keep millions of dollars that it took from the company — money that doesn’t belong to them, and was earned by honest hardworking people.”
——–
Meh…
If you want to believe that this was all so the DOJ could steal money from the sleazy CEO of a prostitution site, then no one can stop you.
Stached1
@Tobi: Exactly. I have also heard that on the site they allowed men who had been trafficked from other countries to be pimped out as hoes.
Danny Adams II
The law is the law and if you break the law, you can be held accountable. However, I think that adult prostitution that involves consenting 18 or over adults should be legal but should be monitored, like the adult film industry, to make sure that the sex workers and clients are not underage.
Clint G. Calero
Thank you, James Rumsey!
o.codone
The congressman is talking out his azz when he says: “I am deeply concerned that your investigators were more motivated by the nature and orientation of the sexual activity facilitated by Rentboy.com” blah, blah, blah. Where’s the evidence for prosecution based on nature and orientation? There is none. This congressman thinks Rentboy’s getting busted has something to do with them selling gay sex (as opposed to any kind of sex)? There’s no evidence for that either. So, this congressman is just kissing his constituents azz and trying to climb to the top of the sh itheap, trying to get some name recognition in the cesspool that is American politics today. Must be a Democrat. What has gone wrong with the Democrat party that every one of them has agreed to fabricate anything, to exaggerate anything, to jump on any bandwagon just to advance the democrat agenda? Hillary is a case study in what I’m talking about.
o.codone
And, I forgot to say that this Matt Baume robot is a desperate-to-appear-cute-cuz-he-knows-he-really-isn’t little face-scrunching, hipster twit, in need of both a shave and a little sunshine so he can stop looking like the pink maggot he actually is. Aside from that, I like him just fine.
Juanjo
@o.codone:
So leg me get this clear – you are upset when a congressperson says he has concerns regarding the motivation of a prosecution because he has no evidence to support his claimed concern? Interesting that you know of evidence to support your doubt of his motivations and yet have not shared those with us. Not much on logic and rational argument are we Mr ocodone?
o.codone
@Juanjo: @Juanjo: You’re making my point precisely. Didn’t I just say that Democrats (you) will “fabricate anything” to advance the agenda? I made it perfectly clear what his motivations are. He’s making this sh it up in order to ingratiate himself with constituents and to get name recognition. That’s his motivation. You DID get it straight, and you validated my point better than even I could have. Thank you. You’re a genius, and for that, you don’t have to call me Mr. Ocodone, you can call me “Oh”.
Lookyloo
Look at the timing of the raid (and maybe put on your tin foil hats)
The RentBoy ‘raid’ happened literally a couple weeks after the Ashley Madison hacking data-dump – and all those people (both famous and non-famous) were outed hard.
Is it possible that a few (or more) closeted powerbroker types of the world freaked the eff out because they used the RentBoy site to find homosexfun on the DL – and had no idea what kind of info the RB servers had or kept on visitors (RB says they have no identifying info on site visitors – but powerful+secretive people are paranoid) – and one or more of them called in a couple favors with the friendly US gov’t to get those servers offline tootsquick and into a more friendly+clandestine hands of the murky DoJ…?
Is this too far out a theory? Isn’t the timing – compared to the Ashley Madison dump – just a bit coincidentally suspicious?
And, like this congressman asks: Why only RentBoy?
Okay. You may now remove your tin foil hats… or don’t… you be you.
DerekR
@Stached1: And I think I heard somewhere that you are a huge douche bag…oh wait….that’s right, it was here and like everyday.
DerekR
And btw you can change your name all u wish but you can’t change being a stupid, judgmental prick.
David Mack
what law was broken here….???
doug105
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/79/ff/90/79ff90634289f5ea122817cdc28c525f.jpg
doug105
Law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did last year
Officers can take cash and property from people without convicting or even charging them with a crime — yes, really! — through the highly controversial practice known as civil asset forfeiture. Last year, according to the Institute for Justice, the Treasury and Justice departments deposited more than $5 billion into their respective asset forfeiture funds. That same year, the FBI reports that burglary losses topped out at $3.5 billion.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/
onthemark
@doug105: THAT’S the important thing here. The Fourth Amendment has effectively been abolished, “law” enforcement steals their money, the victims will be hassled for awhile but nobody will ever be prosecuted (probably because no law was violated? – nobody will ever know, in a legal sense), and the system runs as usual.
@o.codone: Your screen name might be enough “evidence” to the cops that you’re a drug dealer, Oxy (can I call you Oxy?), so don’t be surprised when they bust down your door at 4 a.m., shoot your dog dead, confiscate all your money & valuables & all your bank accounts, and then don’t even bother to prosecute you (if you’re white).
GayEGO
Hmmmmmmmm….. I wonder if the GOPs are doing the investigation, hoping they can make some money! :>)
GayEGO
@Juanjo: What do you expect from a Republican, they want money no matter how they get it! :>)
youarekiddingme
@Lookyloo: That’s been the straight (excuse me for using the word) line conclusion drawn from the very beginning…Some folks are VERY scared that they’re rendezvous with “gay rentboys” will get exposed for all the wold to see. Like you said. Just like Ashley Madison.
Tobi
@youarekiddingme: No, Rentboy was nothing like Ashley Madison. It wasn’t a dating site, where you needed to set up a profile and provide personal details including an email address. You simply browsed the gentlemen’s profiles and called them on their mobile. If you need a working example to understand the concept, check out Rentmen http://rentmen.com which is set up in exactly the same way as Rentboy was, albeit they’ve been smart enough to domicile their corporation, servers and payment gateway in Bulgaria.
Lookyloo
@Tobi: You understand and are secure with understanding RB servers don’t have visitor info to be hacked – BUT I guarantee some Saudi Prince or some Chinese Oligarch or the like whose wealth, power, and (in some cases) personal safety depends on him not being randomly+publicly outed isn’t gonna be so understanding and casual about it.
That’s the point. It doesn’t matter that there is nothing identifiable to be hacked, irl.
The powerful+secretive people here both don’t fully understand the workings of RB (or general internet) tech stuff -nor- were they willing to trust on-their-lives that they aren’t somehow linked electronically (and hackable) to RB.
The Ashley Madison hack freaked them out, they overreacted – but feel safer, and now they owe some big favors to the U.S. gov’t.
Periwinkle
@DCguy: and it also ties into the timing of some hollywood divas (including Streep) uniting with a public face against prostitution… to the ire of several sex workers, incidentally, to which one was once associated with the cite, stoked those fires as well.