Police Scotland has helped smash an online international paedophile ring in an operation labelled "one of the biggest blows against child pornography in recent years".
It centred on a German-based website called KidFlix which was housed on the Dark Web and had more than 1.8m users. Operating in almost 40 countries around the globe, the site was said to have hosted over 6,200 hours of horrific abuse on film.
Each video was uploaded in multiple versions – low, medium and high quality – allowing criminals to preview the content and pay a fee to unlock higher quality versions. Worldwide, authorities were able to identify almost 1,400 individual users of the platform.
Now, the National Crime Agency (NCA) has revealed that Police Scotland was among 28 UK forces involved in the investigation. In total, 63 Britons have been identified as using KidFlix of whom, almost half have now been arrested.
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The site has since been dismantled. Last month, a Continent-wide swoop, organised by Europol led to searches being conducted at locations in 31 countries. Among the operations was one which saw a joint raid by German and Dutch forces leading to the seizure of a hard drive with around 72,000 videos of child sex abuse.
In one case, a 36-year-old German male living in the eastern city of Chemnitz was detained and his son was handed over to child protection services. The creators of Kidflix are said to have made millions from the operation. Created in 2021, it allowed users to both download and stream video files, unlike other paedophile websites.
Payments were made via cryptocurrencies which were then converted into tokens. Credits could also be earned by "clients" uploading their own material allowing them to access to further child abuse imagery. A Europol spokesman said: "So far, 79 of these individuals have been arrested for sharing and distributing child sexual abuse material. Some of those arrested not only uploaded and watched videos but also abused children."
A senior NCA spokesman revealed his delight at the news of the crackdown. NCA senior manager Neil Keeping said: "With thanks to our law enforcement partners in Germany and Europol, a dangerous site hosting tens of thousands of child sexual abuse videos has been taken down.
"Our intelligence officers worked quickly to identify the UK users of the site, providing a package of intelligence to forces across the country so arrests could be made and children could be safeguarded."
He added: "Providing this global to local response is paramount in our role to protect children from child sexual abuse and criminals who seek out this content. We will continue to work with international law enforcement partners to disrupt the online platforms that operate on the dark web, purely for the sexual gratification of offenders, and ensure children are safeguarded from abuse."
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