A crackdown of a child pornography website, one of the largest seen by federal investigators, resulted in 337 people facing charges across the world.
Six of those people were right here in Massachusetts.
The U.S Department of Justice announced this week that 23-year-old Jong Woo Son, a South Korean national, was indicted in a District of Columbia federal court after authorities said he ran the “largest child exploitation market by volume of content.”
The website, Welcome To Video, had users from all across the United States as well as the United Kingdom, South Korea, Germany, Canada and other countries.
On March 5, 2018, law enforcement agents arrested Son in South Korea and seized the server he used to run a darknet market.
Son’s website advertised child sexual exploitation videos and members of the site could download the videos, federal authorities said.
The volume of videos seized was one of the largest of its kind. Authorities seized eight terabytes of videos.
There were more than 250,000 unique videos. Just under half of those videos, 45% to be exact, contain new images that authorities didn’t know existed, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is now pouring over the images to identify victims.
Son’s website sold the videos to people but required sales to be done through the cryptocurrency, bitcoin.
“This darknet website is among the first of its kind to monetize child exploitation videos using bitcoin,” the U.S. Department of Justice said. “In fact, the site itself boasted over one million downloads of child exploitation videos by users.”
The website, according to authorities, had 1 million bitcoin addresses in a server, showing the website had the capacity for at least that many users.
Law enforcement agencies shared data from the server around the world. The 337 people arrested in the case are from 38 countries. More than 90 people were in the United States.
Authorities said at least 23 minors, who are victims in the case, were rescued from locations in the United States, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Two users of the website committed suicide before investigators could execute search warrants.
A forfeiture complaint in the case seeks the seizure of the funds used to fund the website. There were 24 individuals in five countries using the virtual currency to fund the website.
“Darknet sites that profit from the sexual exploitation of children are among the most vile and reprehensible forms of criminal behavior,” Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski said. “This administration will not allow child predators to use lawless online spaces as a shield.”
Those arrested in Massachusetts were:
- Eryk Mark Chamberlin, 25, of Worcester, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and is awaiting sentencing
- Jairo Flores, 30, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty to receipt and possession of child pornography and was sentenced to serve 5 years in prison followed by 5 years of supervised release
- Billy Penaloza, 29, of Dorchester, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty to possession and receipt of child pornography. His sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 22
- Michael Armstrong, 35, of Randolph, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty to receipt and possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to serve 5 years in prison followed by 5 years of supervised release
- Al Ramadhanu Soedomo, 28, of Lynn, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and was sentenced to serve 12 months and one day followed by 5 years of supervised release
- Phillip Sungmin Hong, 24, of Sharon, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty to receipt and possession of child pornography and is awaiting sentencing