Twenty-seven people from nine U.S. states and Canada, Australia and Britain have been charged with possession, receipt, distribution and manufacture of child pornography
“This (bust) is a very significant event. The multinational approach was really important,” said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Eighteen prominent banks, credit card companies and Internet service providers joined Allen Wednesday in launching the new Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography. Among them: American Express, Chase, Citigroup, MasterCard, Visa, Bank of America, Microsoft, PayPal and Yahoo.
“If people were purchasing heroin or cocaine and using their credit cards, we would be outraged and do something about it. This is worse, ” said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., chairman of the Senate’s banking committee and a founding organizer of the coalition.
An Article from October 3, 2004
The Age
A US operation tracks web porn from Russian crime groups to Australia, writes Max Blenkin.
It all started in the French city of Lyons eight months ago. Stunned Australian Federal Police were presented with computer disks with excruciating details of the internet child porn obsessions of up to 500 Australians.
The international headquarters of Interpol is in Lyons. It was there that US investigators revealed the fruits of their investigation into a lucrative racket run from the former Soviet republic of Belarus. By then the writing was on the wall for the international network of porn sites uncovered in the lead-up to this week’s crackdown on internet child abuse.
The previous month, US Attorney-General John Ashcroft had revealed the existence of Operation Falcon and the indictment of porn website company Regpay, a company operating from Belarus, and the US firm, Connections USA.
Regpay processed subscriptions for third-party internet websites, while Connections USA provided Regpay with credit card processing services for those subscriptions.
“Regpay allegedly processed nearly US$3 million ($A4.1 million) in subscription fees by persons seeking pornography - much of it being child pornography,” Mr Ashcroft said.
The beneficiaries were Russian organised crime groups.
Copywrite © original authors
