CEO of backpage.com, Carl Ferrer (pictured), was arrested on felony pimping charges in October 2016

U.S. law enforcement agencies have seized the sex marketplace website Backpage.com as part of an enforcement action by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to a posting on its website on Friday.

The posting said the U.S. Justice Department would provide more information at 6pm EDT.

It said U.S. attorneys in Arizona and California, as well as the Justice Department's section on child exploitation and obscenity and the California and Texas attorneys general had supported the work in shutting down the website.

Meanwhile, co-owner of the website, Michael Lacey, had his home raided by the FBI, with 'about 20 undercover cops' swarming the property Friday morning, according to a tweet by Evan Wyloge, of the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.

Lawmakers and enforcement officials have been working to crack down on the site, the second largest classified ad service in the country after Craigslist that is used primarily to sell sex.

The U.S. Senate passed legislation last month making it easier for state prosecutors and sex-trafficking victims to sue social media networks, advertisers and others that fail to keep sex trafficking and other exploitative materials off their platforms.

A posting on its website Friday said that the FBI had removed the Internet site backpage.com (pictured)

Backpage.com CEO Carl Ferrer, left, along with former co-owners Michael Lacey (M) and James Larkin (R), in Sacramento Superior Court on October 12, 2016

The Supreme Court in January 2017 refused to consider reviving a lawsuit against backpage.com filed by three young women alleging the site facilitated their forced prostitution.

But the site has since then faced a slew of other lawsuits alleging child sex trafficking.

In October 2016, the CEO of backpage.com, Carl Ferrer, was arrested in Houston on felony pimping charges after arriving back to the US from Amsterdam.

Ferrer, 55, was charged with pimping a minor, pimping and conspiracy to commit pimping, according to NPR.

Charges were dropped against Ferrer two months later, with the court ruling that the law has 'precluded liability for online publishers for the action of publishing third party speech and thus provided for both a foreclosure from prosecution and an affirmative defense at trial.'

'Congress has spoken on this matter and it is for Congress, not this Court, to revisit,' Judge Michael Bowman said in his decision.

Weeks later, the state of California submitted new allegations to the court, charging Ferrer along with co-owners James Larkin and Michael Lacey, along with COO Andrew Padilla, with money laundering and pimping.

Those charges were also dropped following the Supreme Court's January 2017 ruling.

The Justice Department spent three years investigating Backpage.com before Ferrer's first arrest, employing at one point an undercover operation aimed at confirming allegations that escorts ads were for the sole purpose of buying and selling sex.