An FBI raid on a Bay Area website that features reviews, ratings, and listings for sex workers ended in an arrest of at least two employees and a complete shutdown of the site. However, at least one advocate is decrying the action, saying that the site’s closure could endanger, not help, local sex workers.
MyRedbook.com, which describes itself as featuring “San Francisco Bay Area Escorts, incall, outcall, escort agency, massage parlors, AMP, AAMP, escort reviews, classified ads,” was raided Wednesday morning because it was “advertising children for prostitution,” reports CNN.
The FBI Shuts Down MyRedbook.com
According to KPIX, the bust was part of last month’s national child sex trafficking crackdown known as “Operation Cross Country.”
The effort, which according to CNN has resulted in the “rescue” of 168 minors and the arrest of 281 alleged sex traffickers, led to the arrest of “54 johns, 13 pimps, and 57 adult prostitutes” in the Bay Area, as well as the rescue of six children who were “forced into prostitution,” the Contra Costa Times reported.
According to law enforcement sources who spoke with CNN, some of the children rescued in the sweep were identified through MyRedbook.com.
KTVU staffer Azenith Smith tweeted a photo outside what she said was the MyRedbook raid, saying that “FBI & IRS searching this #MountainView home tied to http://myredbook.com – child exploitation web site.”
[…] workers for decriminalizing “consensual” prostitution have been spurred anew following the FBI seizure of a West Coast sex services website that prosecutors say hooked up clients with prostitutes and which sex workers saw as a vital forum […]