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Amazon and Microsoft employees caught up in sex trafficking sting
The tech industry has a clear history of sexism and misogyny, but a recent Newsweek report highlights another problem. The publication got its hands on a slew of emails sent to brothels and pimps between 2014 and 2016 that document the industry's patronage of brothels and purchasing of services from trafficked sex workers. Among the emails, which were obtained through a public records request to the King County Prosecutor's Office, were 67 sent from Microsoft employee email accounts, 63 from Amazon accounts and dozens more from companies like Boeing, T-Mobile, Oracle and local Seattle tech firms.
Some of the emails were collected during a 2015 sting operation that targeted sex worker review boards and resulted in the arrest of 18 individuals, including high-level Amazon and Microsoft directors. Two opted for a trial, which is currently set to begin in March.
Seattle's sex industry has grown right alongside its tech industry and the city's authorities have said that some men spend up to $50,000 per year on sex workers. Brothels are even known to advertise how close they are to tech offices. Alex Trouteaud, director of policy and research at the anti-trafficking organization Demand Abolition, told Newsweek that the tech industry is a "culture that has readily embraced trafficking."
Newsweek: Tech Bros Bought Sex Trafficking Victims by Using Amazon and Microsoft Work Emails
Related: "Pimping" Charges Against Backpage Executives Dismissed
(Score: 4, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday December 27 2017, @08:23PM
I've been told one of the major crime families, the Bonnanos IIRC, run most of Vegas' prostitution. There's always going to be an element of criminality here because of how intimate this is; you simply cannot give up your body and control thereof to a perfect stranger without experiencing some kind of soul tarnish. And the "free market" being what it is, and Americans' fucked-up attitudes about sex being what they are, you can bet there are all kinds of perverse incentives and weird, shady arrangements with the law even in Vegas.
A good friend of mine, a now 50-year-old survivor who was trafficked from 12-16 during the Reagan years, told me her "worse dates" (her phrasing, not mine) were cops, professors, clergy, and judges.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...