US police arrest 190 for child porn in US crackdown
June 10, 2012
Police have arrested 190 people and rescued 18 children in a
major US crackdown on child pornography, including some detained in
Europe and elsewhere, judicial authorities have said.
Most
of the arrests in Operation Orion through the month of May took place
in the United States, but suspects were also picked up in Argentina,
Britain, the Philippines, Spain, Sweden, Serbia and the Netherlands.
"Many
of the child exploitation cases under Operation Orion began with a
child or teen chatting with someone he or she met online," said
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton
yesterday.
"Let this operation be a warning to anyone who would
think they can use the Internet to exploit children: we are out there
looking for you, we will find you, and you will be prosecuted," he added
in a statement.
Operation Orion targeted individuals "who
possessed, received, transported, distributed, advertised or produced
images or videos of child pornography," the ICE statement said.
Among
those arrested was a 35-year-old individual in Louisiana suspected of
using the seven-year-old he babysat to make child pornography, and a
35-year-old in Oklahoma who offered money for sex to a 14-year-old
victim he met on a social networking site.
In Michigan, a
54-year-old allegedly persuaded an underage boy to join him in illegal
sexual conduct that he then photographed, while a 28-year-old was found
to have more than 1,200 images and 109 videos of suspected child
pornography on computers and media storage devices.
In Los
Angeles eight men were arrested, including one who met his alleged
12-year-old victim on Facebook, and who was detained after agents from
ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) section pretended to be her
online.
Theodore Perez, 29, was arrested on May 1 when he arrived at a shopping mall to meet a 12-year-old girl he met on Facebook.
Back to News List