Prague criminal police have arrested a Czech man suspected of being one of the largest distributors of child pornography in the world, who was also wanted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the EU police office (Europol), spokeswoman Kristyna Zelinkova said today.
The man is now in custody, and faces up to eight years in prison if convicted for the production and other use of child pornography and for forcing a child to produce pornography.
The police said the suspect’s criminal operation has been ongoing for several years on the dark web, a hidden and anonymous system of internet networks.
“He focused primarily on distributing material created by others, and also provided advice to others on how to sexually abuse underage boys or how to effectively distribute child pornography on the dark web,” said Zelinkova, adding that he had also acquired U.S. citizenship and was described by U.S. media in the 1980s as an “electronic genius”.
She said the FBI had been keeping records of the man and his activities for almost a decade, but it was only after an international operation coordinated by Europol that the police discovered his identity.
Thanks to this cooperation, Prague criminal police then caught the suspect “at an advanced age”, and coordinated the investigation to gain full access to the originally secure and encrypted data, which amounted to several terabytes, Zelinkova said.
