US Indicts S. Korean Child Porn Web Operator, 337 Users In Global Sting - Justice Dept.

US Indicts S. Korean Child Porn Web Operator, 337 Users in Global Sting - Justice Dept.

Law enforcement in 24 US states and 11 countries have arrested 337 users of Welcome to Video, the largest child pornography website ever discovered on the dark web along with sight operator Jong Woo Son of South Korea, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th October, 2019) Law enforcement in 24 US states and 11 countries have arrested 337 users of Welcome to Video, the largest child pornography website ever discovered on the dark web along with sight operator Jong Woo Son of South Korea, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday.

"Through the sophisticated tracing of bitcoin transactions, IRS-CI [Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigations] 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's physical location in South Korea," IRS-CI Chief Don Fort told reporters. "This largescale criminal enterprise that endangered the safety of children around the world is no more."

The site was shut down on March 5, 2018, when South Korean National Police arrested Son and seized the server, which exclusively advertised child exploitation videos, the department said in a press release. Son is currently in custody serving a sentence in South Korea.

Since then, authorities worked to identify children in more than 250,000 videos as well as customers who purchased videos, the release said.

An additional 337 site users residing in 24 US states 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, the release said.

The take down also resulted in the rescue of 23 children in the United States, Spain and the United Kingdom, who were being actively abused by the users of the site, according to the release.