German police busts world’s largest online child sex abuse network

The police in Germany have arrested three people who ran one of the world’s largest online child sex platforms containing abuse materials and images.

A police statement released on Monday said that a fourth person was arrested in Paraguay by the Interpol after slipping out of Germany.

The online platform which was known as Boystown and hosted on the dark web, had 400,000 registered users when it was taken offline by an international taskforce.

The global team, spearheaded by the German Federal Criminal Police, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), included the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) and law enforcement agencies from the Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, Canada and the United States.

The three main suspects were arrested for operating and maintaining the Boystown platform during raids on seven properties in mid-April.

All of the suspects are male German nationals, according to Europol, who said that a 40-year old man was arrested in the west German city of Paderborn, a 49-year-old man was arrested in Munich and a 58-year-old man was arrested in Paraguay.

A fourth suspect, a 64-year-old man from Hamburg, was arrested on suspicion of being one of the site’s most active users, having registered as a member of the platform in July 2019 and posted more than 3,500 times.