Police have taken down a huge pedophile website that had 400,000 members and contained child pornography material mostly involving boys abuse. Europol has reported three German men as the main suspect of the website and the child porn platform is now completely raided and its servers have been seized and turned off.
advertisement
Warning: Graphic Information Ahead
The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) reports that it has successfully shut down a dark onion website known as the 'Boystown' portal that allegedly had more than 400,000 members.
It is reported that the main suspect, in this case, are three German men, Europol reported.
The German Federal Criminal Police (Bundeskriminalamt) set up the international task force, which included Europol and law enforcement agencies from the Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and the United States.
Getty Images
According to the authorities, the three middle-aged men are a 40-year-old from the Paderborn district, a 49-year-old from the Mühldorf am Inn district and a 58-year-old man from Northern Germany who previously lived in South America for several years.
The forum has been allegedly used for gang-like distribution of child pornography. They are also accused of operating the platform as administrators.
During the investigation, detectives also found evidence of another suspected gang member in the Concepción region (Paraguay.) But have not yet named the man.
Alamy
advertisement
The accusation: gang-like distribution of child pornographic content. The child porn platform is now completely raided; its servers have been seized and turned off.
Apart from this one additional suspect, a 64-year-old man from Hamburg is said to have been one of the platform’s most active users, and police say he posted more than 3500 posts on the forum.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office in Frankfurt am Main – Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT) – and the BKA had already searched a total of seven objects in North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, and Hamburg in mid-April. Since then, the suspects have been in custody.
Now the BKA informed about the blow against the child porn network.
screenshot/BKA
Apparently, this child pornography platform has been using the dark web since 2019, when it initially began.
The platform was global, and child porn was exchanged around the world. As the name suggests, the platform showed videos of the most abuse done on the boys.
According to the BKA, the forum was “divided into different areas in order to enable structured filing and easy retrieval of child pornographic content.” There were also two chat areas in different languages.
Getty Images
advertisement
Following this big step, police say that additional arrests are expected in the upcoming weeks.
This is one of the largest take-downs of a child abuse form since The Playpen a few years ago. Authorities said that Boystown was one of Europe’s “most prolific child sexual abuse platforms on the dark web.”
However, while reporting this, it is important to point out that during this joint operation, Boystown wasn’t the only dark web child porn website shut down, but it’s the only site named at the time of this report.
Getty Images
advertisement
Police have also confirmed that the data seized by law enforcement will be used for Victim Identification Taskforces regularly organized at Europol.
It is expected that more arrests will be made internationally as police worldwide examine the intelligence gathered.
Getty Images