An international search for child exploitation on the Internet using Bitcoin from a South Korean child pornography site (WTV-WelcomeToVideo) has led to the arrest of a 28-year-old local, Greater Sudbury police said April 7. The investigation resulted in the removal of one of the largest child sexual abuse sites on the Darknet. Launched in 2019, the investigation was a collective effort involving the U.S. Internal Security Investigation (HSI), the British National Crime Agency (NSA) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Information about people living in Canada who bought child exploitation material from the site was sent to the local police by the RCMP so that law enforcement agencies can launch investigations into people living under their jurisdiction, the GSPS said in a statement. On April 5, the Internet child exploitation unit, the forensic unit and the intelligence unit carried out a search warrant at a residence in Greater Sudbury, and as a result of the investigation, the GSPS arrested a 28-year-old and charged him with two counts of access to child pornography and two counts. charges of possession of child pornography. The man appeared in bail court on April 6 and was taken into custody by police. His name will not be made public in order to protect the identities of potential victims. An investigation into the incident is ongoing, police said. According to a news release from the United States Department of Justice, provided to the media by the GSPS, on March 5, 2018, agents from the IRS-CI, the HSI, the National Crime Service in the United Kingdom and the National Police of Korea wiped out to seize about eight terabyte child sex exploitation videos, one of the largest seizures of its kind, the statement said. The confiscated files, which are currently being analyzed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), contained more than 250,000 unique videos. The publication states that 45 percent of the videos currently being analyzed contain new images that were not previously known to exist. The darknet site where the material was hosted is one of the first of its kind to generate revenue from child exploitation videos using bitcoin. In fact, the site itself had more than a million child exploitation videos downloaded by users. Cybertip.ca is Canada’s national advice for reporting child sexual exploitation online. Canadians are encouraged to report concerns to Cybertip.ca if someone they know can victimize children online. Editor’s note: Sudbury.com has changed the way we describe material showing child sexual abuse, as we believe that “child pornography” is an inaccurate term that equates sexual abuse with legal pornography. We believe that “child sexual abuse material” is a more accurate term. However, according to the Penal Code, “child pornography” is the way these categories are described, so when only charges are recorded, Sudbury.com will use the term “child pornography”.
