Seven heads of the rentboy internet brothel, arrested this week on pimping and prostitution charges, claim they don’t think they were doing anything wrong.
The federal sting bagged the escort site’s 50-year-old chief executive Jeffrey Hurant, as well as its director, accountant, social media manager, two sales executives, and at least one male sex worker.
All the defendants named in the government’s criminal complaint are said to have actively participated in some form or another in soliciting paid sex online and providing it in real time.
“I don’t think we do anything to promote prostitution,” Mr. Hurant asserted at his bond hearing this week. “I think we do good things for good people and bring good people together.”
According to prosecutors, that’s a very benign description of what Hurant’s website #rentboy has been doing since its inception in 1996.
They’re insisting it’s a virtual whorehouse that has made multimillions of dollars annually by charging stiff membership fees from male prostitutes eager to sell their bodies for steep prices.
And that is against the law.
“As alleged, Rentboy[dot]com attempted to present a veneer of legality, when in fact this internet brothel made millions of dollars from the promotion of illegal prostitution,” said Kelly Currie, acting U.S. attorney for New York’s Eastern District.
Prosecutors further revealed a network of Twitter accounts and other social-media sites that were also used to explicitly promote and even review the services and wares of male escorts pimping themselves and being pimped on rentboy.
Escorts' membership profiles cost from about $60 to $300 or more a month to post, and used a broad range of terms to identify what kind of intercourse they were offering, ranging from mild to hardcore, with some escorts charging upwards of $300 per hour.
The best rentboys were additionally nominated for “Hookie Awards” each year, in a publicized event that the website’s heads billed as “covering all aspects of the oldest profession as presented in the newest media.”
In fact, it was at this year’s #Hookies on Manhattan’s notorious 42nd Street that accused pimp Jeffrey Hurant got nabbed for prostitution without initially realizing it: He gave his business card and cyberpimp[at]rentboy email address to an undercover agent.
As of yesterday Hurant and his cronies are free on bond, but the bustling internet brothel they allegedly operated for almost two decades has gone dark.
