The Power of the Paedos - another high profile case hits the 'never happened' wall?

[Jan Klimkowski]

Massive UK-based paedophile network busted, with the majority of the paedophile customers in the US:

Four men in court after police smash global paedophile ring

Lincolnshire police led operation to crack UK-based network distributing child pornography to 46 countries

Matthew Taylor guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 May 2011 18.34 BST

More than 130 children in the UK have been rescued from immediate danger after police smashed an international paedophile ring that distributed millions of indecent images and films to 46 countries.

Four men Ian Frost, 35, Paul Rowlands, 34, Frost's brother Paul, 37, and Ian Sambridge, 32 pleaded guilty at Nottingham crown court on Friday to various charges of making, distributing and possessing indecent images of children.

The Lincolnshire police force, which led the operation, said it was the biggest paedophile ring of its kind in the UK and that 132 children in had been "safeguarded" and a number of paedophiles had been removed from positions of trust, including jobs as teachers, doctors, youth workers and police officers.

Detective Chief Superintendent Roger Bannister said: "Protecting and safeguarding children has been our main focus throughout this investigation and it is satisfying for those involved to see these really good results. It has always been in my mind, and that of the investigation team, that every single face in the millions of child abuse images in this case is someone's daughter or son."

The four men masterminded an illegal uncensored newsgroup on the internet in order to circulate images and movies.

The UK authorities were tipped off by police in Germany in November 2005. The subsequent operation was jointly run by Lincolnshire police and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), but nearly all of the UK's forces, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency and several international law enforcement agencies were involved.

Police say that of those subscribers investigated in the UK so far, nearly two-thirds either admitted possession of indecent images or the images were found upon initial analysis of their computers. Police said the vast majority had been previously unknown to the police.

Peter Davies, the senior police officer heading CEOP, said: "Many of the images being shared online were horrific.

"The lengths to which people went to try and conceal their criminal activity were huge but did not prevent them being caught by persistent and dedicated work... Offenders out there thinking they can operate online anonymously should look at these results and think again." The net began to close on the gang in 2006 when officers raided Ian Frost's house in the small picturesque hamlet of Martin Dales in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, which he shared with Rowlands.

Police found an industrial-sized server that was so large that the lights in the room dimmed when it was turned on because of the amount of power it required to operate. Officers said it had a memory capacity of 4.5 terabytes, equivalent to 3.2m floppy disks.

Officers found other news services were being run by Paul Frost, also an IT worker, from Woodhouse in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. Sambridge, a legal adviser, was running another from a property in St Albans, Hertfordshire.

Police estimate the group netted about £2m over seven years, although they did not appear to have had extravagant lifestyles. Of those receiving the illegal content, there were 211 in the UK, and 38 have been dealt with to date. Police said the largest number of subscribers were in the US.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/may/06...NTCMP=SRCH

Customers arrested and tried as a result of the operation include the Deputy Head of a Cumbrian NHS trust, who pleaded guilty to possessing indecent images of children, a scout leader and ex-school governor from Devon, and a school crossing patrol worker from Humberside.

http://www.channel4.com/news/internation...ng-smashed

The original intelligence is from 2005:

At a briefing ahead of the court hearing, Detective Superintendent Paul Gibson, of Lincolnshire Police, said officers first received intelligence from German Federal Police in November 2005 that Ian Frost was running a news service that had an association with indecent images of children. Officers executed a search warrant at Frost's home in 2006 in the small picturesque hamlet of Martin Dales in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, which he shared with Rowlands.

Police found a piece of equipment Det Supt Gibson called a "raid array" - a redundant array of independent disks - which is made up of a number of hard drives wired together. Officers found the raid array had been operating an uncensored news service in Manhattan, New York, in 2005 before moving to the location in Lincolnshire.

http://www.echo-news.co.uk/uk_national_n...g_smashed/