This Listing Has Been Removed by the Community

By Alicia Dorr in News on Jan 12, 2007 8:05PM

Craigslist — a "virtual smorgasbord of products and services" — is a pretty fine resource for jobs, bikes, Sifl 'n Olly show DVD sets, and really killer missed connections. What it is not, however, is a pimping outlet.

Two Chicago women must not have realized that when they decided to use the site as a means of advertising their wares, i.e. young girls. Cook County officers regularly look for prostitutes using the site, but were shocked recently when they found listings for 14-, 15- and 16-year-old girls. The two women and a boyfriend were running a house of ill repute using these children, who could bring in up to $300 a day.

The three were thankfully arrested and, aside from the child pimping, are also being held for all the other things the officers found in their home, such as $10,000 worth of crack cocaine and a larger arsenal than the U.S. has in Iraq.

We're disgusted at the charges, and hope things like this don't ruin the Internet for everybody down the road. TIME magazine won't be able to keep naming us the person(s) of the year if crackheads and criminals keep using free sites like Craigslist. We're relieved that the people who run and use the site generally keep these types of things in check thanks to a complaint and removal system, but individual users can only do so much. Stupid jerk criminals better not be a catalyst in forcing us all offline.

Image via Ron M. Hoffmann's MIT page.