back to article RentBoy.com boss faces six months of hard time

A US judge has sentenced the owner of male escort marketplace Rentboy.com to six months behind bars. Judge Margo Brodie, of the Eastern New York US District Court, said on Wednesday that Jeffrey Hurant's history of work with and on behalf of New York's LGBTQ community had earned him a lower-than-recommended prison term. …

  1. Ogi
    WTF?

    I am not sure about the sentence

    Perhaps I am misunderstanding this, but from what I gather, as long as you donate to the right causes, you can get leniency for committing crimes?

    I am not sure that this is a good idea of justice. Ignoring what the money was spent on, it was still earned illegally, by breaking the law. Surely it is the crime itself that should be the basis for sentencing, rather than how the proceeds were spent?

    Or do other criminals now just have to show that a portion of their proceeds went to "good causes" if they want leniency?

    The only other thing I gathered from this situation, is that perhaps they need to consider changing their laws on prostitution, if someone breaking the law is seen as doing a social good.

    1. LaeMing
      Boffin

      Re: I am not sure about the sentence

      If it is all consenting* adults, I don't really see an issue with prostitution.

      *'Consenting' here includes not being subject to extrinsic financial pressure to do the work if one otherwise would not choose to.

      1. Youngone Silver badge

        Re: I am not sure about the sentence

        If one of the 2100 cities mentioned in that screen shot is the one I live in, he broke no laws at all, as long as both parties were over 18.

        Well, no laws where I live anyway.

      2. Andromeda451

        Re: I am not sure about the sentence

        Then it's ok to break "inconvenient" laws? Really? Abide by the law or get it changed. Ignoring the law is anarchy.

    2. Three Finger Salute

      Re: I am not sure about the sentence

      I don't think it was a tit for tat "you pay money for good causes" and "you get an easier sentence". He didn't just donate a bunch of money, he actually spent time in the community doing the good work himself. It's the difference between just donating to a homeless shelter and actually running/working in one. Significant personal contributions to society has historically been considered as an additional factor in sentencing for many crimes.

      1. P. Lee

        Re: I am not sure about the sentence

        >He didn't just donate a bunch of money, he actually spent time in the community doing the good work himself.

        But was he helping the community or stoking demand for his product? Ok that's a low blow. I'd be curious as to how far this logic extends. If I give to the poor but put a hit out on my wife who is stealing from a charity, do I get a free pass?

        I know I'm old fashioned but when you run classes on how to avoid getting AIDS and run a company which promotes and profits from massive amounts of risky sexual activity with multiple partners my hypocrisy alarm goes off. This is Uber-thinking. Don't have a local pimp, have a pimp in The Cloud! It's so different! Your local pimp probably makes very little, we make $10m so we are more successful and must be better! "We pimp you out without baseball bats" is not a mitigation of money laundering crimes.

        >His company, Easy Rent Systems, Inc, pled guilty to charges of conspiring to launder money and has given up its assets. Counts of racketeering and money laundering against Hurant were dismissed at prosecutors' request.

        Or perhaps the light sentence is for quickly giving up his assets to the government? Is the government using sentencing threats for financial gain? If I commit a crime but do it badly and don't have $10m to give the government, would I get the same treatment?

        This smells of an unholy union of plea deals and trendy ideology. Dismissing anti-prostitution measures as "going against consensual trade" is not really following the spirit of the law. If you don't want the measures, get them repealed, then we'll see where that actually leads.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Laundering Payola

        @Three Finger Salute wrote: I don't think it was a tit for tat "you pay money for good causes" and "you get an easier sentence". He didn't just donate a bunch of money,

        Very often, large charities turn out to be involved in the side business of laundering payola and in my experience that is exactly how I read this. Donate $100K to a certain charity, and $25K finds its way to a certain politician.

        Sometimes it's an extortion racket. In a Boston suburb I knew a restaurant that was approached by a minority-interest charity. The restaurant was told, point-blank, donate $5,000 to our charity every month or be picketed as racist/sexist/homophobe. Of course, the poor schelbs on the picket line wouldn't know this, they really believe they are doing right. But for the top management of the charity it was extremely profitable personally. Jesse Jackson turned this into a multi-milion dollar mainstream shakedown business.

        In this case, it's blatant advertising. Donate to this LGBQT organization and get a lesser sentence if convicted.

        Bigotry is one of those things where smug self-righteous pricks don't care if the accused is innocent.

    3. Don Dumb
      Stop

      Re: I am not sure about the sentence

      @Ogi - "Perhaps I am misunderstanding this, but from what I gather, as long as you donate to the right causes, you can get leniency for committing crimes?"

      NO, read the article again and look past the headline. Because that would mean any organised crime or politician would be effectively immune from sentencing. That's not what the judge has done here.

      From the story itself:

      "These considerations appear not to have been lost on Judge Brodie, who told Hurant of his company: "The very thing that was illegal, it also did a lot of good.""

      The judge said that.

      What the judge is effectively saying is that "the law [here] is an ass". The very thing he is being sent down for is something that local elected representatives and ultimately the judge acknowledged was a good thing for society. That is a damming indictment of the US legislative position on this and on the priority of law enforcement in pursuing it.

      This is very different from an old-fashioned racketeer claiming leniency on the basis of funding some art galleries and paying for the church renovation.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I am not sure about the sentence

        hell you need to get your staff somewhere.

    4. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Gimp

      Re: I am not sure about the sentence

      "Perhaps I am misunderstanding this, but from what I gather, as long as you donate to the right causes, you can get leniency for committing crimes?"

      I'm a little more concerned that he was able to run an illegal operation for nearly 20 years with around half a MILLION customers per day by 2015 and no one noticed! It's not like it was even hidden behind an innocuous sounding domain name.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    6 months for $10 million? I'll take it!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Missed the bit where the assets got seized?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Double-standard

    If that site was Rentgirl.com and pimped out women, Hurrant would have received a six-year sentence instead of just six months....

    1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

      Re: Double-standard

      Ah yeah, right. I suppose it's the big gay agenda, or something?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Double-standard

        So, do you or don't you disagree? It's hard to tell for sure with only your flippant dismissal to go on.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Triple-standard

      If it was RentBurqa.com and pimped out coach seats he'd have got life!!! It's the feminazis again! In this all male story, apparently.

      Ratio of thoughtful/relevant comments to cliched bullshit comments is getting dangerously low on this site. Why can't you go and harass guardian readers or something?

    3. Hollerithevo

      Re: Double-standard

      Exploitation is always bad. Men have been exploited sexually forever. I worked with someone who helped young teenage boys who were renting themselves out in London and it was appalling--they didn't even have a pimp to protect them, if you can see a pimp having any redeeming features at all. I am not sure a 'rentgirl' site would have been treated more harshly. Evidence, or is it an anti-gay and feminazi thing you're doing here?

    4. phuzz Silver badge
      Gimp

      Re: Double-standard

      "If that site was Rentgirl.com and pimped out women"

      Slight correction, he was allowing the men to pimp themselves out, acting as a broker not a pimp.

      I'd be very surprised is similar sites don't exist for hetros.

  4. Jamie Jones Silver badge

    Land of the free

    Meanwhile, in Amsredam...

    1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

      Re: Land of the free

      ..... wood haf bean evan betar iff eye curd spelle

  5. Warm Braw

    Dedicated customer service team

    I hope he's given a job at Openreach when he gets out - he clearly knows a great deal more about customer satisfaction.

    1. David Roberts
      Trollface

      Re: Dedicated customer service team

      Ummm.....assuming he practices what he promotes (which is not a given) what he might in fact bring is a talent for buggering the customers even more comprehensively.

      Though possibly with fewer overall complaints.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Dedicated customer service team

        The customer comes first

      2. Mongrel
        Happy

        Re: Dedicated customer service team

        but at least you'd get an OpenReacharound as part of the package

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No view on the case, but fascinating that it took 9 years for the Feds to realise that a website called rentboy.com might be a bit dodgy.

    1. Hollerithevo

      Marine supplies

      Kept mis-reading as RentBuoy.com

      1. Diogenes

        Re: Marine supplies

        That would have been RentBooie using the funny pronunciation the septics use.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "No view on the case, but fascinating that it took 9 years for the Feds to realise that a website called rentboy.com might be a bit dodgy."

      N-n-n-n-nineteen years. Even more gobsmacking!

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