Minnesota- What started as a tip from Australian authorities in 2006 regarding a sexually explicit online video has turned into one of the largest global child pornography investigations on record—which has also been traced to Minnesota.
The case has resulted in the rescue of 14 girls—some as young as three-years-old—who were being sexually abused by pornographers. Approximately 170 people have been arrested, more than 60 of them U.S. citizens. Officials believe just the tip of the iceberg has been discovered after dismantling seven major child pornography rings.
Authorities in Queensland, Australia came across a pornographic video online showing a young victim, which officials believed was Dutch. Belgium authorities were contacted, who were able to identify and arrest a suspect, who provided information about the video’s producer, an Italian national who ran a pornographic website.
When Italian police arrested the producer and shut down his website, they retrieved 50,000 e-mails to the porn site. Those e-mails formed the basis of crackdown, named ‘Operation Joint Hammer.’ Europol traced the e-mails to the 28 countries from which they originated—with more than 11,000 coming from the United States.
From the U.S. e-mails, about 700 became workable investigative leads. These were divided between the Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Postal Inspection Service, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement—and as the investigation proceeded, many state and local law enforcements participated in the arrests.
According to the FBI’s website, e-mails were tracked to Minnesota. Details about the incident have not been released.
A New Jersey man pled guilty to producing sexual images of his 9-year-old daughter. Evidence seized during the search of his home revealed that he had nearly 130,000 images of child pornography. He was sentenced to almost 20 years in prison.
An Arizona fifth-grade schoolteacher was a customer of the Italian pornography website. A search of his home resulted in allegations of sexual contact with female students at his school. He faces multiple charges of sexual exploitation of children.
A convicted sex offender from Philadelphia who spent 15 years in prison for molesting children was charged with advertising, distributing, and receiving child pornography. Evidence indicates that he administered two major global online child pornography bulletin boards.
So far, the FBI and our U.S. partners have conducted more than 250 searches as part of the operation.
