John" wanted to be a John. He's recently widowed and sought paid female companionship through several of the dozens of websites that appear in a Google search for "Bend escort." But "John" was actually a Mark, and he'd been duped by whoever was behind the screen asking for deposits from unrenewable cash cards or online payment processors. By the time he wised up he'd spent over $500 in pursuit of paid sex work.
The basic formula repeated itself; he responded to an ad on one of the webpages and was told to text a phone number — never actually speaking with another person. They'd demand a deposit to set up a meeting and something would inevitably go wrong. They got a flat tire, or got pulled over, or were robbed and needed some extra money to meet.
"They claim that they're real, and they'll start pitching, 'Oh, I love you or I really want to be with you' and all this other stuff. Those are all the standard lines that are used. And at the end of the day, if you believe any of it, and you're anxious to meet somebody, you may pay the piper, but you don't get any delivery," "John" said.
Back in the days before the online commodification of pretty much everything, one could find escort advertisements in phone books or your local alt-weekly. Now, after Craigslist killed the classifieds and YellowPages.com killed the Yellow Pages, people seeking sex take to wading through the untrustworthy, unverifiable and now illegal posts on sketchy websites.
"John" requested anonymity for this story for two reasons. First, it's not wise to admit to crimes in the paper, but also because he's worried that if any of his interactions were real it could run afoul of dangerous people. But it's likely that he's afraid of ghosts. Reverse image searches of the advertisements show many of the "local escorts" are repeated across the country, often using images of porn stars, Instagram models and non-local sex workers.
Cyber-scamming
The people "John" spoke to may not even be in the country. Christopher Maxwell is a reformed scammer based out of Nigeria. He started doing "romance scams" while in his second year at university studying tourism and hospitality management. His targets weren't like "John," though; he primarily sought after older women using photos he found online of a man in the military.
Maxwell said he could make roughly tens of thousands of dollars from a single mark and started requesting money after just a couple weeks of interacting with someone. His last scam was a woman who gave him over $20,000 before getting sick. He said he felt intense guilt and eventually arranged a video-call. He apologized for scamming her and she accepted. She set him up with Social Catfish, an anti-scamming website, and now the scammer and the Mark are friends who speak regularly. Though romance scams and escort scams are approached differently, there's a similar theme of requesting money to meet and demanding more before following through.
"When I use a man's picture I just tell the woman, 'I want money to buy groceries, blah blah blah.' But if I'm a woman talking to a man, I tell him, 'Hey, I want to come meet you, I'm jobless and I have no money. So, we need to book a flight and I have no money to pay for the flights," Maxwell said.
Lynn, who lives in the Portland area and requested her last name not be used, got taken for over $100,000 from a romance scammer. The financial burden is delaying her retirement, and there's seemingly no recourse for the scammer.
"I have contacted the FBI. I've contacted the Portland Police. And nobody does anything. Because after a while there was no wiring of money, it was all sending him the money through Bitcoin. And Bitcoin, once you do that, it's gone," Lynn said. "The police say there's nothing they can do. They were so cold, and it was like they were making the victim the person who was wrong. They don't know what it's like to lose a partner and be vulnerable and want to be loved again."
"John" faced a similar dilemma in Bend when he called the police on a suspected scammer. He said police weren't sympathetic when he reported the potential scam. Rather, he was told that he could be arrested and told those engaging in prostitution are likely victims of sex trafficking. Bend Police Department spokesperson Sheila Miller said there are certainly instances of sex trafficking in sex work, but it's hard to say precisely how much of it is coerced or voluntary. There is also the gray area between overt coercion and using sex work to avoid poverty.
Cops and grifters
Over the past year BPD arrested 12 people for prostitution, six for soliciting and six for engaging. BPD also conducted a sting operation through online escort sites, where officers posted ads and in further communication claimed to be a minor. That resulted in 20 arrests. Over 200 people reached out through the advertisements, and though most cut off contact after being told they were engaging with a minor, nobody reported it to BPD. How the department deals with instances of prostitution can vary, but often arrest isn't the first resort.
"We don't always cite or arrest them, because that's maybe not always the answer. What our officers always or typically try to do is to connect them with resources, groups that that can help them if they need or want to get out of sex work," Miller said.
People who are scammed on the escort sites usually won't contact police, and when they do there are challenges for the officers. There's no way to know if the scammer is within their jurisdiction. Investigations can be time-consuming, and in any case, the investigation is on behalf of a person who engaged in illegal behavior.
The 2000s and early 2010s were different. Online classifieds like Craigslist and Backpage advertised tongue-in-cheek ads for sex work, but the federal government threatened and eventually shut down sexually explicit posting on Craigslist and took Backpage offline entirely.
"When Backpage was targeted by federal authorities, new websites popped up. And they've been kind of popping up and going away ever since," Miller said. "It's constantly evolving. There are websites that are popular for particular cities, but not for others, and you kind of have to be looking for it to find those websites."
New laws for the oldest profession
The Allow States and Victims to Fight Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act became law less than a week after the Department of Justice seized Backpage. FOSTA-SESTA, as the pair of bills are called, creates an exception to Section 230 of the U.S. Constitution that shields websites that host user-generated content from liability. The bills made it illegal to advertise or promote sex trafficking. Some sex workers argued it actually makes it more difficult to work safely, and thus far only one person has been convicted under the act.
Elle Stanger is a podcaster, pornographer and lobbyist for decriminalized sex work through Oregon Sex Workers Committee. She said in places like New Zealand where there's no criminal penalty for consensual sex work, there are far fewer instances of scamming, trafficking and violence than in places that criminalize sex work.
"The idea is that you are preventing sex workers from being harmed by preventing them from interacting with clients in the first place. This is off the assumption that all clients are violent, dangerous predators, which they are not," Stanger said. "The current model in the U.S. actually makes it a lot harder to address trafficking, pimping and violence, because to interact is essentially illegal anyway."
Stanger argued that the criminal statutes aren't accurate or helpful for sex workers. She said the Oregon statute is vague enough that one of Portland's many strip clubs could run afoul of its criminalization of paid sexual contact.
"It's just an example of an archaic statute that needs to be either struck or reworded so that it's not a crime to engage sexually, consensually, transactionally at all. But other crimes still remain; you can't rape someone, you can't rob someone, you can't murder someone, you can't commit any kind of larceny," Stanger said.
"John" gave up on the escort pages after one too many scams. He said he only intended to seek an escort for a cuddle service due to health problems but is permanently distrustful of the websites he visited.
"I've learned my lesson, but I just don't think there are hardly any of them are legit," he said. "It's the oldest profession. And it's always been an exchange of goods for services, mostly in the form of cash, I get that. But this is different that you never saw any of them. And they do their best to entice you with whatever language they use in the texts. And you just get ripped off, that's the bottom line."
