From the Office of the California Attorney General [oag.ca.gov ]

SACRAMENTO — California Attorney General Xavier Becerra today announced charges of extortion, money laundering, and identity theft against four defendants who are allegedly behind the exploitative website Mugshots.com. The website mines data from police and sheriffs' department websites to collect individuals' names, booking photos and charges, then republishes the information online without the individuals' knowledge or consent. Once subjects request that their booking photos be removed, they are routed to a secondary website called Unpublisharrest.com and charged a "de-publishing" fee to have the content removed. Mugshots.com does not remove criminal record information until a subject pays the fee. This is the case even if the subject had charges dismissed or had been arrested due to mistaken identity or law enforcement error. Those subjects who cannot pay the fee may subsequently be denied housing, employment, or other opportunities because their booking photo is readily available on the internet.

"This pay-for-removal scheme attempts to profit off of someone else's humiliation," said Attorney General Becerra. "Those who can't afford to pay into this scheme to have their information removed pay the price when they look for a job, housing, or try to build relationships with others. This is exploitation, plain and simple."

I've been waiting for the hammer to be dropped on this and related business models - ones that profit by exploiting bad news or bad reviews, particularly bad news or reviews that turns out to be false, fake, trumped up. In the era of abundant fake news, rumor mongering, spin, etc. its predictable that people will eventually say "Enough!" Not everyone is subject to 1st Amendment rights . . to be an attacker of others ~political candidate attack ads.

All it takes is one smart attorney general to get the ball and chain rolling.