SALINAS, Calif- There's a new trend in the world's oldest profession. Sex for sale online, and there's not much local law enforcement agencies can do about it.
A quick search of the Website MyRedBook.com, and you'll soon realize what the women are marketing. "It's bold it's out there," says Salinas Police Officer Lalo Villegas. "They're selling themselves, it's prostitution."
On sites like MyRedBook.com, you can surf hundreds of postings that are anything but subtle. Women charge by time, and service, often using acronyms and code words for the sex acts they'll perform.
"There's a whole subculture on the internet," says Ashly Lorenzana. She started as an escort when she was just 17 years-old. "I was making over five grand a month…there was no shortage of interested people or clients."
Lorenzana says it's safer for girls to sell sex online because websites offer forums where they can communicate with each other. "You can e-mail back and forth with other girls, which is very useful…you can share information like phone numbers of guys who harass or stalk them...I think it's kind of evolved into this, and I really do think it's a good thing."
Law enforcement agencies would disagree, but there's little they can do. While prostitution carries a misdemeanor charge, the websites and their postings are perfectly legal. Villegas says, "Writing in there saying they'll do this sex act, for this much, it's not against the law. There has to be a furtherance of the act." Basically meaning, cash has to come out, to close the deal. But catching prostitutes in the act isn't easy.
Local departments lack the resources required to set up sting operations that can take weeks, and as many as 15-20 officers. "It's a lot more difficult than just pulling up and arranging a date," Says Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark, "there's a lot of back and forth, you have to know the language."
Recently, Santa Cruz Police got word a 16 year-old was booking clients online, and meeting them a local hotel. The department teamed with an FBI task force called "Innocence Lost" to make the arrest, but Clark says, busts don't always come that easy. "We have a lot of responsible motel owners here in the city that are willing to work with us and address the problem, and then we have others that simply aren't, and turn a blind eye to the problem."
Like most cities on the Central Coast, Santa Cruz Police primarily focuses on street level prostitution, but even that is changing. "The industry has evolved and morphed, and it's learned how to adapt and use new technology just like any other industry," says Clark, "we see often times these girls using their smart phone out on the street to set up dates."
Making matters worse for Santa Cruz, is that prostitutes flock to the city. The most recent example, the 16 year-old caught at a local hotel, was wanted out of Sacramento County. "They tell us they specifically come here to Santa Cruz to do business because, the word on the street is, the Santa Cruz Judiciary does not take the issue very seriously, and the penalties are much lighter than what they'd be back in their hometown."
Now, gangs from the Central Valley and Sacramento area are using prostitution as a means for support, pimping sometimes underage girls online, to rake in profits. Clark says, "The judges don't seem to treat it with the seriousness or they don't understand the residual problems that it brings into a neighborhood, far beyond just the act of prostitution."
In 2010, the FBI launched "Operation Cross Country." In just three days, 885 arrests were made in online prostitution stings, and 69 children were rescued as victims of child prostitution.
