SAN FRANCISCO — Eric Omuro, the former operator of MyRedBook.com who plead guilty to charges of facilitating prostitution and forfeited more than a $1 million in cash and two cars, was sentenced Thursday to more than a year in federal prison for running the site.
Omuro, known to many as “Red,” was ordered to serve 13 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
He pleaded guilty in December after agreeing to give up more than $1.28 million from 11 bank and savings accounts and an IRA account, as well as a 2011 BMW and a 2012 Mini Cooper.
As part of a plea agreement, Omuro also forfeited the domain names for his websites, MyRedBook and SFRedBook, which he ran from April 2010 to June 2014 before being shut down.
Federal prosecutors said that Omuro and an accomplice, Annmarie Lanoce, were complicit with prostitution involvement, listing acronyms for sex acts in a "terms and acronyms" section of the site and offering menus of sexual services, hourly and nightly rates and customer reviews.
Prosecutors also pointed to VIP memberships that allowed customers "access to 'private forums' and heightened capabilities to search reviews of the prostitution services."
Lanoce, Omuro’s accomplice, reached a plea deal with prosecutors last November and was scheduled to be sentenced yesterday, but her sentencing was continued to a later date.
The sites, prior to their seizures by the Justice Department and IRS, purportedly were used by more than 10,000 sex workers when the sites were taken off the Internet.
Email sent. If you wish to send to another person, click here.
