Operation Delego | |
---|---|
Operation Name | Operation Delego |
Type | Child pornography crackdown |
Roster | |
Planned by | United States |
Executed by | Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Germany, Hungary, Kenya, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Qatar, Serbia, Sweden and Switzerland and the United States |
# of Countries Participated | 15+ |
Mission | |
Target | Website: Dreamboard |
Timeline | |
Date executed | 2009 |
Results | |
Accounting |
This article needs to be updated.(October 2022) |
Operation Delego [1] was a major international child pornography [2] investigation, launched in 2009, which dismantled an international pedophile ring that operated an invitation-only Internet site named Dreamboard which featured incentives for images of the violent sexual abuse of young children under twelve, including infants. Only 72 charges were filed against the approximately 600 members of Dreamboard due to the extensive encryption involved. Members were required to upload new material at least every 50 days to maintain their access and remain in good standing.
Operation Delego is a spinoff investigation from leads developed through "Operation Nest Egg," the prosecution of another online group dedicated to sharing and disseminating child pornography. Operation Nest Egg was a spinoff investigation developed from leads related to another international investigation, "Operation Joint Hammer," which targeted transnational rings of child pornography trafficking. [3] Dozens of law enforcement agencies were involved worldwide in Delego, [4] including Eurojust, and arrests were made on all five continents. [5] Twenty of those charged, however, are only known by their Internet handles, and as such were individually charged as John Does and remain at large. However, some of the indictments were unsealed as of August 2011, and the names of some of those involved in Dreamboard are publicly available.
United States Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stated at a news conference that "The board may have been the vehicle for the distribution of up to 123 terabytes of child pornography, which is roughly equivalent to 16,000 DVDs," making this the DHS's largest child porn bust in its history. Launched in 2009 by federal law enforcement, Operation Delego resulted in the arrest of 52 people in 14 countries of which are Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Germany, Hungary, Kenya, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Qatar, Serbia, Sweden and Switzerland, according to United States Department of Justice Attorney General Eric Holder. Furthermore, according to federal agents, while Dreamboard's servers were located in Shreveport, Louisiana, the site's top administrators were in France and Canada.
A total of 72 individuals have been charged as a result of Operation Delego. To date, 57 of the 72 charged defendants have been arrested in the United States and abroad. [6] 42 individuals have pleaded guilty. [6] 25 of the 42 individuals who have pleaded guilty for their roles in the conspiracy have been sentenced to prison and have received sentences ranging between 10 years and life in prison. [6] 15 of the 72 charged individuals remain at large and are known only by their online identities. [6] Efforts to identify and apprehend these individuals continue. [7]
Bernard Vincent Ward is an American former radio personality whose career ran from 1985 to 2007. Formerly a radio talk show host with KGO 810 AM in San Francisco, California, Ward, once billed by KGO as "The Lion of the Left" and "unabashedly liberal," was the host of the daily news talk program, The Bernie Ward Show, and the three-hour program, GodTalk, on Sunday mornings.
Jared Scott Fogle is an American former spokesman for Subway restaurants. Fogle appeared in Subway's advertising campaigns from 2000 to 2015 until an FBI investigation led to him being convicted of child sex tourism and possessing child pornography.
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Michael John Devlin is an American criminal convicted of kidnapping and child sexual abuse of two young boys, Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby. He is serving 74 life sentences plus 2,020 years at Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri. His life sentences are 30 years each; his total sentence is 4,240 years.
Morton Robert Berger is a former high school teacher from Phoenix, Arizona and a convicted child pornography collector. He was convicted in 2003 for possessing 20 pornographic images of children and sentenced to 200 years in prison without possibility of probation, parole, pardon or clemency. This sentence, which was the minimum available under Arizona law, was upheld by the Arizona Supreme Court in 2006. On February 26, 2007, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear a further appeal.
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Paul F. Little was an American pornographic actor, producer, and director better known by his stage name Max Hardcore. He rose to prominence in 1992 with the film series The Anal Adventures of Max Hardcore, which in 1994 was awarded the X-Rated Critics Organization's award for Best Amateur or Pro-Am series. Former AVN writer, Gerrie Lim, has classified Hardcore's works as gonzo pornography and "testing the limits of acceptability". He was a member of the X-Rated Critics Organization's Hall of Fame. He spent two and a half years in prison (2009–2011), convicted in a trial for obscenity.
Legal frameworks around fictional pornography depicting minors vary depending on country and nature of the material involved. Laws against production, distribution and consumption of child pornography generally separate images into three categories: real, pseudo, and virtual. Pseudo-photographic child pornography is produced by digitally manipulating non-sexual images of real minors to make pornographic material. Virtual child pornography depicts purely fictional characters. "Fictional pornography depicting minors", as covered in this article, includes these latter two categories, whose legalities vary by jurisdiction, and often differ with each other and with the legality of real child pornography.
Sextortion employs non-physical forms of coercion to extort sexual favors from the victim. Sextortion refers to the broad category of sexual exploitation in which abuse of power is the means of coercion, as well as to the category of sexual exploitation in which threatened release of sexual images or information is the means of coercion.
Operation Protect Our Children was a 2011 joint operation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Department of Justice's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section to execute "seizure warrants against 10 domain names of websites engaged in the advertisement and distribution of child pornography". The enforcement action was spearheaded by ICE's Cyber Crimes Center (C3).
The Federal Correctional Institution, Elkton is a low-security United States federal prison for male inmates near Elkton, Ohio. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. It also has an adjacent satellite prison camp that houses low and minimum-security male inmates.
The Federal Medical Center, Butner, is a United States federal prison opened in 1995 in North Carolina for male inmates of all security levels who have special health needs. It is part of the Butner Federal Correctional Complex and is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. An adjacent satellite prison camp houses minimum-security male inmates.
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Lisa A. Biron is a disbarred attorney from Manchester, New Hampshire, and a convicted child molester and child pornographer. In November 2012, she was indicted on federal charges related to the sexual exploitation of her 14-year-old daughter, including taking her to Canada to have sex with a man there. She was convicted on all charges in a January 2013 trial, and was sentenced that May to 40 years in prison.
Playpen was a notorious darknet child pornography website that operated from August 2014 to March 2015. The website operated through the Tor network which allowed users to use the website anonymously. After running the website for 6 months, the website owner Steven W. Chase was captured by the FBI. After his capture, the FBI continued to run the website for another 13 days as part of Operation Pacifier.
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