On the Cyber-Trail Of Child Exploiters

The theory, or the fear, was that purchasers of child pornography could have been abusing children as well. And ICE spokeswoman Jamie Zuieback pointed out, "If you're buying the stuff, you're feeding the demand for more molestation."

In early 2004, as ICE agents fanned out across the country with search warrants, they found their fears often fulfilled: A Nevada man had videotape of himself abusing a young girl; a New Jersey man admitted he had molested or raped at least nine children; a Florida man was arrested while on his way to New Jersey to have sex with a 13-year-old girl.

Similar arrests occurred in England, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand in the fall of last year and early this year. Australian authorities described their 200 arrests as the largest child porn crackdown in the country's history. More than 1,200 people have been arrested worldwide, and ICE officials have described Operation Regpay as the largest Internet child porn investigation ever conducted.

Allen, of the missing children center, pointed out that Regpay's Web site netted $3 million in less than a year, and C3's probe found it had 70,000 customers in the United States and another 26,000 worldwide paying $19.95 a month for graphic images of small children being sexually assaulted.

"If you had told me 10 years ago that there was a consumer market for this, I would've told you you were wrong," Allen said. "I would have said it's the province of a small, fixated group of pedophiles. What we have discovered is child pornography is a multibillion-dollar industry around the world."

Huge numbers of tips flow into C3, largely from the missing children center. Allen said the center received 112,000 child porn-related tips last year.

"It's a triage, like a battlefield triage," said Claude Davenport, the national program manager for C3. But, he added, "We have some of the most cantankerous bulldog investigators here," who will wade through the Internet sludge to track sellers and users.

The center also tries to identify and locate the actual children in the images to protect them from further abuse. Plitt said 85 percent of the child porn images on the Web are simply recycled from old photo shoots, and the victims have been identified. Courts often require that an actual victim be identified in the prosecution of a porn seller or user.

Lt. Kevin Butler, coordinator of an Internet Crimes Against Children task force in South Florida, said the Cyber Crimes Center's database of victims has provided "great evidence in court" for prosecutions in Florida. His investigators also consult C3 for analysis of evidence and for training.

"It's invaluable," Butler said of C3, "not only to the state of Florida, but to the whole world."

For more information, visithttp://www.ice.gov.