Five Dutch among 300 arrested in massive global child porn case

A joint investigation between the Dutch National Police, the American FBI and an Australian investigation team led to the dismantling of a massive child porn site. A total of 303 suspects, 5 of them Dutch, were arrested. The site counted more than 45 thousand members and contained over 360 thousand child porn photos and movie files, the Volkskrant reports. The newspaper calls it the "world's largest child porn site". A total of 106 victims have been identified so far. Most of them are under the age of 12. The site's chief administrator, Australian Shannon M., was recently sentenced to 35 years in prison. According to the newspaper, he worked as a youth counselor in an Australian children's home, where six of his victims lived. Two of the Dutch suspects - Erwin van der B. from Almelo and Auke V. from Friesland - were also recently convicted, both receiving sentences in prison and psychiatric care. Van der B. was co-manager of M.'s site and V. helped managed a second, smaller child porn site also run by M. After arresting these three suspects, the police took over their online identities and ran the two sites for six months. This allowed them to collect suspects' information and trace the victims. The suspects identified so far come from 10 different countries including Australia, the Netherlands, Colombia, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates. The investigation is still ongoing and more arrests are expected. The sites were removed from the web.