More than 300 hundred arrested in "dark web child abuse" sting!
Hundreds, around 338 people have been arrested in the worldwide sting of "largest dark web child porn marketplaces", investigators said.
The now seized English website, "Welcome to Video" hosted 2,00,000 videos showing illegal acts committed to children, which were downloaded more than a million times. The site had eight terabytes of data containing gruesome acts being done to infants, toddlers and children.
The site's owner Jong Woo Son, 23, from Korea is currently in prison, serving a sentence of 18 months. Unites States officials have unsealed nine allegations against him.
"You may try to hide behind technology but, we will find you and arrest you and prosecute you." Jessie Liu, the US attorney for the District of Columbia said in a press conference.
The site was shut down a year ago in March by US authorities, but on Wednesday officials said 338 users have been arrested from 38 countries including UK, Ireland, US, South Korea, Germany, Spain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Czech Republic and Canada.
The site also used a Bitcoin based marketplace with at least 7,300 transaction worth about 730,000 dollars. UK's National Crime Agency said "The site was one of the first to offer sickening videos for sale using the cryptocurrency bitcoin. "
The arrest was result of a three years of hunt by National Crime Agency of Britain, and task forces from UK, US, South Korea and Germany. The officials first came across the website while investigating one of UK's worst child sex offender and paedophile, geophysicist Dr Matthew Falder in 2017. Fadler, admitted to 137 offenses and is serving a 25 years sentence for sharing images and abusive videos on the dark web. Then in March, 2018 officials went to South Korea to take down the website's server and to arrest Jong Woo Son, the owner of the site.
The officials were able to arrest many suspects by tracing the cryptocurrency transactions. Seven men from the UK and five from America have already been convicted of the investigation. One of them being, Kyle Fox another child offender already in jail for raping a five-year-old boy and sexually abused a three-year-old girl.
“The scale of this crime is eye-popping and sickening,” said John Fort, the chief of IRS criminal investigations. The task force was able to rescue 23 children from a state of constant abuse.
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