{"id":133269,"date":"2019-10-16T13:29:35","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T17:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/breaking911.com\/?p=133269"},"modified":"2019-10-16T13:31:07","modified_gmt":"2019-10-16T17:31:07","slug":"breaking-hundreds-charged-worldwide-in-the-takedown-of-the-largest-darknet-child-pornography-website-funded-by-bitcoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/breaking911.com\/breaking-hundreds-charged-worldwide-in-the-takedown-of-the-largest-darknet-child-pornography-website-funded-by-bitcoin\/","title":{"rendered":"Hundreds Charged Worldwide In The Takedown Of The Largest Darknet Child Pornography Website Funded By Bitcoin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2013 Jong Woo Son, 23, a South Korean national, was indicted by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia for his operation of Welcome To Video, the largest child sexual exploitation market by volume of content. The nine-count indictment was unsealed today along with a parallel civil forfeiture action. Son has also been charged and convicted in South Korea and is currently in custody serving his sentence in South Korea. An additional 337 site users residing in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington State and Washington, D.C. as well as the United Kingdom, South Korea, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Czech Republic, Canada, Ireland, Spain, Brazil and Australia have been arrested and charged. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acting Executive Associate Director Alysa Erichs of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)\u2019s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department\u2019s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu for the District of Columbia, and Chief Don Fort of IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) made the announcement.\u201cChildren are our most vulnerable population, and crimes such as these are unthinkable,\u201d said HSI Acting Executive Associate Director Alysa Erichs. \u201cSadly, advances in technology have enabled child predators to hide behind the dark web and cryptocurrency to further their criminal activity. However, today\u2019s indictment sends a strong message to criminals that no matter how sophisticated the technology or how widespread the network, child exploitation will not be tolerated in the United States. Our entire justice system will stop at nothing to prevent these heinous crimes, safeguard our children, and bring justice to all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDarknet sites that profit from the sexual exploitation of children are among the most vile and reprehensible forms of criminal behavior,\u201d said Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department\u2019s Criminal Division. \u201cThis Administration will not allow child predators to use lawless online spaces as a shield. Today\u2019s announcement demonstrates that the Department of Justice remains firmly committed to working closely with our partners in South Korea and around the world to rescue child victims and bring to justice the perpetrators of these abhorrent crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChildren around the world are safer because of the actions taken by U.S. and foreign law enforcement to prosecute this case and recover funds for victims,\u201d said U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu. \u201cWe will continue to pursue such criminals on and off the darknet in the United States and abroad, to ensure they receive the punishment their terrible crimes deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThrough the sophisticated tracing of bitcoin transactions, IRS-CI special agents were able to determine the location of the Darknet server, identify the administrator of the website and ultimately track down the website server\u2019s physical location in South Korea,\u201d said IRS-CI Chief Don Fort. \u201cThis largescale criminal enterprise that endangered the safety of children around the world is no more. Regardless of the illicit scheme, and whether the proceeds are virtual or tangible, we will continue to work with our federal and international partners to track down these disgusting organizations and bring them to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the indictment, on March 5, 2018, agents from the IRS-CI, HSI, National Crime Agency in the United Kingdom, and Korean National Police in South Korea arrested Son and seized the server that he used to operate a Darknet market that exclusively advertised child sexual exploitation videos available for download by members of the site. The operation resulted in the seizure of approximately eight terabytes of child sexual exploitation videos, which is one of the largest seizures of its kind. The images, which are currently being analyzed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), contained over 250,000 unique videos, and 45 percent of the videos currently analyzed contain new images that have not been previously known to exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcome To Video offered these videos for sale using the cryptocurrency bitcoin. Typically, sites of this kind give users a forum to trade in these depictions. This Darknet website is among the first of its kind to monetize child exploitation videos using bitcoin. In fact, the site itself boasted over one million downloads of child exploitation videos by users. Each user received a unique bitcoin address when the user created an account on the website. An analysis of the server revealed that the website had more than one million bitcoin addresses, signifying that the website had capacity for at least one million users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The agencies have shared data from the seized server with law enforcement around the world to assist in identifying and prosecuting customers of the site. This has resulted in leads sent to 38 countries and yielded arrests of 337 subjects around the world. The operation has resulted in searches of residences and businesses of approximately 92 individuals in the United States. Notably, the operation is responsible for the rescue of at least 23 minor victims residing in the United States, Spain and the United Kingdom, who were being actively abused by the users of the site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Washington, D.C.-metropolitan area, the operation has led to the execution of five search warrants and eight arrests of individuals who both conspired with the administrator of the site and were themselves, users of the website. Two users of the Darknet market committed suicide subsequent to the execution of search warrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amongst the sites users charged are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n