Johannesburg - Police and the American FBI believe they have cracked an international child exploitation syndicate after the last of a group of nine suspects - which included one South African - was convicted of child pornography.
Brian Hendrix, 42, from Mount Juliet, Tennessee, was convicted on Friday by a federal jury on child pornography charges relating to his participation in two websites that were operated for the purpose of enticing minors to engage in sexually explicit conduct on web camera.
According to a statement released by the American Department of Justice, the investigation, known as Operation Subterfuge, identified more than 300 minor victims and estimated that 1600 minors had been lured to the websites.
Evidence that emerged during the trial revealed that the co-conspirators used false profiles on social networking sites that portrayed them as young teenagers, to lure children to the websites they controlled.
They then played pre-recorded videos of prior minor victims, often engaging in sexually explicit conduct, to make the new victims think they were chatting with another minor.
Using these videos, conspirators coerced and enticed children to engage in sexually explicit activity on their own web cameras which the website automatically recorded, it stated.
Based on their contribution to the success of website objectives, conspirators earned points, which allowed them access to the sexually exploitative videos of children.
According to the statement, law enforcement agencies have disabled both websites.
The FBI were assisted in their investigation by international counterparts including the SAPS’s family violence, child protection and sexual offences units, as well as Dutch and Australian police.
South African national Anthony Evans, 54, who was part of this syndicate, pleaded guilty to charges of the possession, distribution and manufacturing of child pornography.
On May 29 last year, the Grahamstown guest house owner was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Eastern Cape High Court in a plea and sentencing agreement.
A request to extradite Evans to the US is still in place, but attempts to verify the status of the extradition request with the National Prosecuting Authority were unsuccessful at the time of publication.
Evans is one of a number of South Africans to be nabbed for their involvement in child pornography.
Last year, the SAPS made numerous arrests of people believed to be operating in local and international child pornography rings.
Among them was a 39-year-old Boksburg car salesman who was arrested in October for possession of child pornography after a tip-off led police to his dealership.
National police spokesman Brigadier Vishnu Naidoo said at the time: “We arrested him at his workplace and later raided his home.”
Three laptops, external hard drives, cellphones, memory cards, a DVD player, PlayStation console and a mini spy-camera were confiscated from his home.
In September, a 47-year-old man was arrested in Fish Hoek after he was found to be in possession of thousands of images of child pornography, with some showing violent abuse of babies as young as a few days old.
In January last year, a 37-year-old computer engineer from Plettenberg Bay was arrested after Belgian police profiled a paedophile on a social media website.
The police have been investigating the South African wing of the paedophile ring, which has members across the globe.
All the suspects have been arrested as part of an international child pornography investigation known as Operation Cloud Nine, which is part of a joint crackdown by South African and Belgian police forces.
So far, 49 people from around the world have been arrested in the Cloud Nine operation.
@Gabi_Falanga
The Star