Police arrest more than 300 suspected paedophiles worldwide after massive child abuse website hosting 250,000 sickening videos is taken down from ‘dark web’ and US prosecutors charge South Korean ‘ringleader’
Police in the US, UK, Germany and South Korea have taken down a worldwide paedophile ring where sex offenders paid in bitcoin to download hundreds of thousands of vile child abuse images.
More than 250,000 horrific videos, stored on a computer server in South Korea and available through a website called ‘Welcome To Video’, were sold to paedophiles around the world through the dark web, with more than a million clips downloaded.
The US Department of Justice has now charged South Korean suspect Jong Woo Son, 23, with running the website as police forces around the world move in on those who have been using the site.
So far, 337 suspects have been arrested globally, with 18 investigations in the UK and seven men already convicted.
British paedophiles Dr Matthew Falder and Kyle Fox were among hundreds of sex offenders around the world using the sick website, which was based in South Korea
Welcome to Video, the site used by paedophiles around the world, has now been shut down and replaced with this message
The arrests were made in 38 countries including the UK, Ireland, America, South Korea, Germany, Spain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Czech Republic and Canada.
The site was uncovered when police arrested Cambridge graduate Dr Matthew Falder, a geophysicist from an affluent family who led a secret life trading images of child sex abuse.
He later admitted 137 offences, including voyeurism, encouraging child rape, and sharing images showing the abuse of a newborn baby, and has been jailed for 25 years.
The National Crime Agency, Britain’s equivalent of the FBI, found a link to the website, which then sparked a global investigation.
The subsequent police probes led to the arrest of Kyle Fox, who filmed his sexual attacks on a five-year-old boy and a one-year-old girl.
Fox, from the upmarket London commuter town of Epsom in Surrey, was later jailed for 22 years.
The NCA uncovered Welcome To Video during its investigation into the geophysicist Dr Matthew Falder. His computer is pictured
The NCA’s Nikki Holland said today: ‘Dark web child sex offenders – some of whom are the very worst offenders – cannot hide from law enforcement.
‘They’re not as cloaked as they think they are, they’re not as safe as they think they are.
‘The NCA is relentless in pursuing them and we have specialist capabilities, which we use for all UK law enforcement, to unmask them and help take down sites like Welcome To Video.
‘I’m immensely proud of the role we played in catching some very depraved and dangerous global offenders and for beginning the work that eventually caught Jong Woo Son.’