Austrian authorities said Wednesday they have uncovered a major international child pornography ring involving more than 2,360 suspects from 77 countries, including hundreds in the United States, who paid to view videos of young children being sexually abused.
The children were under the age of 14 and screams could be heard, said Harald Gremel, an Austrian police expert on Internet crime who headed the investigation.
Interior Minister Guenther Platter said the FBI was investigating about 600 of the suspects in the United States. German authorities were following leads on another 400 people, France was looking into about 100 others, and at least 23 suspects were Austrians, he said.
The porn ring was apparently using a Russian-based website to view photos and videos. Users had to pay $89 to gain access to the website. A diligent ISP in Austria noticed something amiss and began tracking IP information which was given to the Austrian authorities.
The investigation began in July when a man working for a Vienna-based Internet file hosting service approached authorities at the Interior Ministry to say he noticed the pornographic material during a routine check, Gremel said.
The man blocked access to the videos while recording the I.P. addresses of people who continued to try to download the material, and gave the details to authorities. Neither the man nor the Vienna company were identified, and police said neither was implicated in the case.
Within a 24-hour period, investigators recorded more than 8,000 hits from 2,361 computer I.P. addresses in 77 countries ranging from Algeria to South Africa, Gremel told reporters.
The videos were posted on a Russian Web site, and users had to pay $89 to access the material, Gremel said.
He said investigators believe the videos, which included images of girls and boys up to age 14, were made in Eastern Europe and uploaded to the site from somewhere in Britain.
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