German authorities shut down a site on the dark web that was trafficking in images of child pornography and abuse. The site had over 400,00 users around the globe, making it one of the largest child pornography sites in the world.
"The platform was internationally oriented and served the worldwide exchange of child pornography by platform members, whereby mainly abuse recordings of boys were exchanged. The platform's forum was divided into different areas in order to enable structured filing and easy retrieval of child pornographic content," German police said in a statement.
They also arrested two people accused of running the site and one person who was an active member. The active member, a 64-year-old man from Hamburg, is accused of uploading over 3,500 images to the site. A fourth person was arrested in Paraguay and is being extradited to Frankfurt.
The identities of the men were not released. Officials said that in addition to running the site, which was started in June 2019, the men also provided advice to users on how to avoid getting arrested.
Officials also said that several chat rooms, which members used to exchange horrific images and videos with each other, were also taken down as part of the operation.
Photo: Getty Images