U.S. and Korean authorities say they broke up one of the world's largest markets for child pornography, a crime that is proliferating at a furious pace with the rise of cryptocurrency and encrypted online content.
The bust was revealed Wednesday as the U.S. unsealed an indictment against Jong Woo Son, 23, who prosecutors say operated a darknet market that accepted bitcoin and distributed more than 1 million sexually explicit videos involving children. Son, a South Korean citizen, is serving 18 months in prison after being convicted there.
Since agents shut down the site in March 2018, authorities have arrested 337 site users around the world. They were in countries including the U.K., Germany, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and in nearly two dozen U.S. states, according to U.S. authorities. The U.K. government said people in 38 countries were arrested.
The site, which encouraged users to upload videos, included hundreds of thousands of illicit images not previously seen by authorities. Authorities say they rescued at least 23 minors in the U.S., U.K. and Spain who were being actively abused by users of the site, which operated from June 2015 until March 2018.
"What we are here to discuss today, the sexual exploitation of children, is one of the worst forms of human evil imaginable," Jessie Liu, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said Wednesday as she announced the charges.
Images of sexual exploitation have mushroomed since 2014, when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received reports of 1.1 million incidents of child pornography. By last year, that number had risen to 18.4 million.
The darknet refers to encrypted online content that hides from traditional search engines. The anonymity of the darknet has fostered crimes like narcotics trafficking, money laundering and child pornography, prosecutors say. Cryptocurrency also has been cited in a wide variety of crimes in which people seek to move money anonymously around the world.
Son's site, called Welcome to Video, contained more than 250,000 unique videos. Of those, 45% contained new images that were previously unknown, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The site operated as a "hidden service" on the Tor network, which concealed the location of the operator and users, said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard Downing.
Child sex offenders set up online communities that "brazenly promote victimizing children and even infants, educate members about how to perpetrate abuse without getting caught, encourage members to document their abuse, and distribute those videos and pictures to groups of predators," Downing said.
Son was indicted under seal in Washington in August 2018 on child pornography and money laundering charges. Users could join the site free with a user name and password, allowing them to download videos. They earned "points" by uploading videos and referring new users. They could buy a "VIP" account that allowed unlimited downloads for six months if they exchanged Bitcoin valued at $353 in March 2018, the indictment said.
The server for the site was run out of Son's bedroom, according to the indictment.
U.S. authorities disclosed information about three dozen of the accused site users, including former federal agents and a Georgia man who videotaped children in his own bathroom and uploaded videos of them. The other site users who've been charged weren't identified. Two users took their own lives after search warrants were executed, authorities said.
Investigators from the Internal Revenue Service and Homeland Security Investigations worked with law enforcement agencies around the world, including the U.K.'s National Crime Agency. The agency said it uncovered the Welcome to Video site while investigating a man now serving a 25-year jail term, and that it identified Son as the operator.
Information for this article was contributed by Neil Weinberg of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 10/17/2019