U.S authorities have shut down what is being described as the world’s largest “largest dark web child porn marketplace” and filed multiple charges against the 23-year-old South Korean man accused of running it.
The website, which is now closed down, called “Welcome to Video” was found to contain over 200,000 unique videos, the equivalent of almost 8 terabytes of data showing sexual abuse and rape of children and infants.
Jong Woo Son, a South Korean citizen, is already serving an 18-month prison sentence in his own country on child pornography charges but now U.S authorities are seeking to press a multitude of their own charges against him.
In addition to Son, U.S officials say a further 337 suspected users of the site, which was active between June 2015 and March 2018 had been arrested worldwide to as of October 15th with more arrests expected.
It was revealed in an unsealed 18-page criminal indictment of Son that his site processed 7,300 Bitcoin transactions worth well over €650,000 as of October 2019.
According to U.S Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard Downing over nearly half of the videos seized were unknown to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Downing said
“There are many children depicted in these videos that have not been identified.”
As well as Son hundreds of others have been arrested with images and videos downloaded from the site including in the U.S, UK and one man in Washington D.C who was found to be in possession of 50 years’ worth of video footage.
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