Federal authorities said Wednesday that a South Korean citizen and hundreds of others around the world have been charged with operating or using a major dark child sexual exploitation website that included videos of adults abusing children as young as 2.

The indictment, with a score of 9.5, says 337 people in 24 U.S. States and 11 countries, including eight people in Washington, D.C., were arrested and charged with operating or using the site.

The Ministry of justice stated that two users of the site have died from suicide after the execution of search warrants.

The dark web, also known as” darknet, ” refers to encrypted online content that is not indexed by conventional search engines.

“Darknet sites that profit from the sexual exploitation of children are among the most vile and reprehensible forms of criminal behavior,” said assistant attorney General Brian Benchkowski of the justice Department’s criminal division.

Prosecutors, who announced the depressurization of the broad indictment, said authorities seized about eight terabytes of child sexual exploitation videos, which they call one of the largest seizures of its kind.

Authorities said the site contains 250,000 videos that have been downloaded a million times by users around the world.

The indictment says numerous graphic videos were posted on the site showing adults performing sex acts with children as young as 2 years old. Viewers can use the search engine to select videos by age, including “teen hardcore” and “pedophile.”  

At least 23 young victims abused by users of the site have been rescued in the US, Spain and the United Kingdom. 

The national center for missing and exploited children (NCMEC) analyzed the site’s content, including more than 250,000 unique videos, according to the justice Department.

The indictment, released in the district of Columbia, says the “Welcome to video” website is run by 23-year-old South Korean citizen Chung Woo Song.

Users who could view videos and upload their own paid for the service with hard-to-find bitcoin. Users earned “points” by uploading their own porn images and videos. 

In 2018, South Korean authorities arrested song and seized His server, shutting down an operation active since at least June 2015.

Son was convicted in 2018 and is serving his sentence in Korea. The indictment unsealed Wednesday not only lists his name and the U.S. charges against him, it also announced the intention of Federal authorities to seize the images and any income and property related to the operation. 

In the Federal complaint says that undercover agents tracked the payments of bitcoin on the darknet website.  

The indictment says authorities got a break from the investigation in 2017 when they discovered that the source code of the site’s homepage failed to hide an IP address that led to a return to South Korea.

Some of those named have already been convicted of related crimes. Among them was Kyle Fox, 26, from the United Kingdom, who was sentenced to 22 years for raping a 5-year-old boy and appearing on a Welcome to video sexually assaulting a 3-year-old girl.

Also named was Richard Nicholas Gratkowsi, 40, of San Antonio, a former National security Investigation agent who pleaded guilty to receiving child pornography and one count of accessing with intent to view it. He was sentenced to 70 months in prison.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: “Vile and reprehensible”: Feds charge 337 worldwide with launch of dark child porn website

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