The chief executive of popular US hook-up site Rentboy.com and six other company employees were arrested yesterday during a raid on charges of prostitution, in a move that has angered LGBT activists.

Rentboy.com’s New York office was raided yesterday by federal authorities who charged its top executives with promoting prostitution, before seizing the website and pursuing the business’s assets, reports The New York Times.

Federal authorities claim that despite the site’s disclaimers telling users that they couldn’t exchange money for sex, it was “clearly” happening.

The Transgender Law Centre condemned the raid in a statement on its website yesterday. “With this raid, the U.S. federal government is not only jeopardising countless people’s lives and only source of livelihood, but sending a clear and troubling message that the country is less invested in addressing systemic issues of racial, economic, and anti-LGBT injustice than in further criminalising the individuals most marginalised by those systems.”

CEO Jeffrey Hurant and six other current and former employees appeared in court yesterday on charges of promoting prostitution. “I don’t think we do anything to promote prostitution,” Hurant told reporters outside the courthouse.

“I think we do good things for good people, and bring good people together.”

“My client advertises for people who are willing to be escorts, to accompany people for their time and be paid,” said Hurant’s lawyer Charles Hochbaum.

“He’s upset and confused about how this legitimate business could become the subject of a Homeland Security investigation.”

The seven people charged have yet to enter official pleas to the charges, reports People.com.

As of today, Rentboy.com is unaccessible.