After authorities shut down the male escort website and seized its assets on prostitution charges, founder Jeffrey Hurant is ‘cleaning up the mess left behind’ – starting by selling mementos for a legal defense fund

On Friday afternoon, the Rentboy.com office near Manhattan’s Union Square looked a little bit like the aftermath of a giant house party in Sixteen Candles. The room was half empty, furniture was positioned at odd angles, and boxes were scattered around with their contents exposed. There was even a half-empty bottle of booze sitting on a shelf. “Usually I have friends who come by and hang out and reminisce,” said Jeffrey Hurant, the founder and owner of the gay escort advertising site. “And sometimes we drink.”

But what happened at the Rentboy.com office wasn’t a celebration, it was a police raid. In August, the Department of Homeland Security arrived, took all of the computers and arrested six of Hurant’s 17 employees. Hurant was later arrested at his home. They were all charged with promoting prostitution.

“As alleged, Rentboy.com attempted to present a veneer of legality, when in fact this internet brothel made millions of dollars from promotion of illegal prostitution,” acting US attorney Kelly Currie said in a statement at the time of the arrests. Each of the Rentboy employees, including Hurant, now faces up to five years in prison.

Last week, the Rentboy offices re-opened for the first time since the raid – but not for business. The office must be cleared out by the end of November, so Hurant is selling Rentboy.com’s assets and raising money for a legal defense fund in the process.

Framed pictures on the wall of attractive men in various states of undress were tagged with pink Post-It notes asking for up to $1,000. Computer monitors were for sale too, as were Rentboy.com T-shirts, calendars and jock straps going for $25-$150. There were photographic prints of Rentboy marketing materials – some much more NSFW than others – like a #LoveWhatIDo campaign that fans of the site could take home and frame.

The sale ended on 8 November. At the time of my visit, Hurant said that about 75 people had showed up to purchase goods, enticed by an ad posted on Craigslist which was widely distributed on Facebook by supporters of the shuttered site. Though he declined to say how much the sale had raised, the defense fund has raised more than $25,000 of a $250,000 goal since it started.

“Jeffery and the rest of the Rentboy team helped significantly propel my career in the adult industry, and I am extremely grateful for their generous efforts,” said Kurtis Wolfe, an escort in Austin, Texas. Wolfe has donated upwards of $1,000 to help Rentboy.com with its legal fees. “It’s my way of giving back to provide the needed support to fight these frivolous charges brought upon by the Department of Homeland Security.”

“I’m so grateful for the support,” said Hurant. “I’m doing my best to smile every day and give thanks that there is a possibility that things will be better.”

And the support has come in droves. In the wake of the national news made by the arrests, a number of sex workers came out in support of the site. Protests against the arrests were held in Brooklyn and West Hollywood and invigorated a discussion about the legalization of prostitution.

“It’s somewhat baffling, though, that taking down a website that operated in plain sight for nearly two decades suddenly became an investigative priority for the Department of Homeland Security and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn,” said the New York Times’ editorial board in an op-ed critical of those prosecutors.

“We sparked a dialogue that is taking off like wildfire,” Hurant says. “Maybe this will be the Stonewall of escorting, if not just gay escorting.”

Hurant, a native New Yorker, founded the company in 1997, and hired his mother as the bookkeeper, where she worked until her death just over a year ago. When a recession hit, Hurant put his employees to work designing the site rather than laying them off. According to authorities, it has made more than $10m since its inception. Hurant said it grew every year until being taken offline.

At its height, Rentboy hosted the Hookies, an awards ceremony for the best escorts around the world, as well as the Hustlaball, a gay circuit party in cities across the world, including an annual event in New York over Columbus Day weekend in October.

But Rentboy was about more than just parties. The company also sponsored Rent U, an education program for men in the sex industry about how to stay safe and healthy and how to operate a business. Just a few days before the raid, Rentboy announced a scholarship contest for those in the industry to “encourage their men to think about long-term career paths outside of the sex industry”.

Since authorities took down Rentboy.com and seized the domain name, a number of other male escorting sites, most already in operation, have popped up. Sites like Rentmen and Men4RentNow are filling the Rentboy void. Wolfe, the Texas escort, said that he’s started advertising on other sites, and that there is “no indication of a possible downturn in business as a result of the government shutdown of Rentboy”.

“We created a genre and we created this entire industry, and I hope they support their escorts the same way we did,” Hurant said.

Asked if that is the most difficult thing to endure, Hurant wasn’t sure how to answer. “The hardest part? There are just 500m broken parts here and I don’t know which I can choose as the hardest,” he said. “They really left me in a really tough situation. They seized lots of money, left me in a position where it’s difficult to even survive, not just pay legal fees.”

Prosecutors took about $1.4m in cash, and Hurant said that he could get a job if he needed to, but he’s unsure about his career path. “What I’m starting to realize is that I’m in no position to know what is coming next for me. It’s not the right time to think about it,” he said.

“Running a multimillion-dollar company with 17 employees and tentacles all over the world takes a lot of time to withdraw and liquidate,” Hurant said.

“This is my responsibility, in the end, to do it. I’m the only guy left standing and I have to take care of it. I have to free myself of some of these worldly possessions and then I can be free to make decisions about what to do next. I’m taking care of the mess left behind.”