© Robert Hare PhD
The must-read book about humanity's intra-species predator
A four-year international investigation into the backers of hundreds of child pornography websites has identified 30,000 customers in 132 countries, led to hundreds of American convictions, and landed the ring running the sites in Eastern European jails.
Law enforcement officials from around the world pulled back the curtain on the previously undisclosed probe in extraordinary detail for Scripps Howard News Service.
The agents revealed the workings of what they call the most significant commercial child porn bust in the Internet's history, in which multiple authorities from the United States, Canada, England, Italy, Belarus, Ukraine, Australia, and other countries, plus Interpol and Europol banded together to close down 230 websites, dismantling what is believed to be the most sophisticated commercial child porn operation to date.
Since the websites -- with names like "Excited Angels" and "Boys Say Go" -- went offline in January, the number of active commercial child porn sites has nosedived from perhaps 300 to the single digits, said Matt Dunn, of the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Custom's Enforcement (ICE), which was the lead law enforcement agency.
"You've taken an organization that was distributing large scale child porn and removed them," said Dunn, of the Child Exploitation Section of ICE's Cyber Crimes Center.
FBI special agent Michael Dzielak investigated the ring with Dunn and other international partners. Like Dunn, he believes the bust has dealt a fatal blow to the child-porn-for-money market -- at least for now.
Comment: Read the full report here