U.S. Attorney’s Office Shuts Down CityXGuide Website

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U.S. Attorney’s Office Shuts Down CityXGuide Website Promoting Prostitution and Sex Trafficking and Indicts Owner Wilhan Martono

The website CityXGuide.com — a leading source of online advertisements for prostitution and sex trafficking that users described as “taking over from where Backpage left off” — has been seized and its owner charged in a 28-count federal indictment, announced United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Erin Nealy Cox.

Wilhan Martono, 46, was indicted 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 in Fremont, California by Homeland Security Investigations and the United States Secret Service.

According to the indictment, Mr. Martono netted more than $21 million off a suite of illicit websites promoting prostitution and sex trafficking. He registered the domain names for several of the sites just one day after the FBI shut down Backpage.com then the internet’s leading source of prostitution and sex trafficking advertisements.

Advertisement of illegal sexual services by CityXGuide and its affiliated websites (Backpage.co CAPleasures.com and BodyRubShop.com among others) allowed brothels, pimps, and prostitutes to post hundreds of thousands of advertisements for sexual services, which users could then filter by geography and preference.

CityXGuide and its companion websites allowed advertisers to select from a pre-populated list of “intimate activities,” then add nude photographs, descriptions, work hours, methods of payment, and contact information for the women being advertised. In order to secure premium placement, the websites offered paid “upgrades,” which could be purchased in Bitcoin or in exchange for gift cards from Walmart, Best Buy, Lowe’s, Amazon, and other retailers. Mr. Martono allegedly used CardCash, a third party gift card reseller, to exchange these gift cards for U.S. currency.

Mr. Martono took steps to conceal his online activity by routing website traffic through an IP address in Europe, using a VPN to mask his IP address while conducting CardCash transactions, and funneling his proceeds through a network of business and personal bank accounts. At the time of Mr. Martono’s arrest, the Department of Homeland Security seized millions of dollars from accounts controlled by Mr. Martono.

Law enforcement has identified numerous minor victims in CityXGuide advertisements, including a 13-year-old Jane Doe recovered in North Texas in November 2019.

If convicted, Mr. Martono faces up to 25 years in federal prison.

Mr. Martono was charged under the FOSTA law passed in the wake of the Backpage scandal in April 2018 that allows the federal government to prosecute websites that facilitate sex trafficking.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr...ex-trafficking