June 9, 2023

US law enforcement officers closed the largest darknet market for child pornography

US and South Korean law enforcement agencies shut down the largest child pornography darknet market through which has distributed over 1 million videos. Calculations on it were made in bitcoins.

The alleged site administrator is a 23-year-old South Korean citizen, Chung Woo Song, who is currently serving an 18-month sentence in his homeland. In the US, he was also charged.

Son Indictment 0 by ForkLog on Scribd

Since March 2018, during the international operation, 337 users of the site from the UK (38), Brazil, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the USA and the UAE have been detained.

Militiamen released 23 victims of sexualviolence in the USA, Great Britain and Spain. They were exploited to produce illegal content on a regular basis. All of them were minors.

“What we are discussing today, the sexual exploitation of children, is one of the worst forms of evil that man has ever created.”“Said Jesse Lou, District of Columbia attorney.

Darknet Market lasted from June 2015 toMarch 2018 The servers, according to the US Department of Justice, were located in Wu Son’s apartment. During this time, the number of detected cases of storage, production and distribution of child pornography increased from 1.1 million (2014) to 18.4 million (2018).

US law enforcement officers closed the largest darknet market for child pornography

Data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Law enforcement officers found 250 thousand unique videos on the site, of which 45% contained images that had not previously been placed at the disposal of the authorities.

A VIP account for unlimited download for six months cost 0.03 BTC (in March 2018). Payment was proposed to be made through several cryptocurrency exchanges, including Coinbase, BTC-e and Bitfinex.

US law enforcement officers closed the largest darknet market for child pornography

US Department of Justice data

The Ministry of Justice revealed the names of dozens of users of the site who have been charged. Among them were employees of federal law enforcement agencies.

The two suspects have already committed suicide after they were put on the wanted list.

Law enforcement officers helped track Bitcoin transactions to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

“The ability of our department to analyze blockchain and deanonymize bitcoin transactions has already allowed hundreds of criminals to be detected around the world”, - emphasized in the IRS.

Recall that this year, as part of international operations, law enforcement agencies partially or completely closed the following darknet markets and enterprises:

  • Wall Street Market;
  • Silkkitie;
  • Deep Dot Web;
  • Cannabis road;
  • Orange Chemicals.

The largest darknet drug market, Dream Market, ceased operations in the spring for unknown reasons.