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

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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