Germany announces bust of 'one of the world's biggest child pornography darknet platforms'

German police
(Image credit: Maja Hitij/Getty Images)

German prosecutors announced Monday that they have dismantled the child pornography platform "Boystown" and arrested three alleged site administrators and one extremely active German user. With more than 400,000 registered members, "Boystown" was "one of the world's biggest child pornography darknet platforms," prosecutors said.

Prosecutors in Frankfurt and Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office said the three German administrators were arrested in mid-April. Police then shut down the platform. The unidentified alleged site administrators — aged 40, 49, 58 — helped pedophiles spread child pornography while evading law enforcement, prosecutors say, and the site included "images of most severe sexual abuse of toddlers" among other vile pornography. The 58-year-old administrator was arrested in Paraguay and the 64-year-old super-user from Hamburg allegedly uploaded more than 3,500 posts to the site.

The bust stemmed from a multinational investigation involving Europol, the Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, the U.S., and Canada.

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Peter Weber

Peter Weber is a senior editor at TheWeek.com, and has handled the editorial night shift since the website launched in 2008. A graduate of Northwestern University, Peter has worked at Facts on File and The New York Times Magazine. He speaks Spanish and Italian and plays bass and rhythm cello in an Austin rock band. Follow him on Twitter.