The Irishmen who bought paedophile pornography off the Internet useda Web company in Forth Worth, Texas, writes Jim Cusack, Security Editor
The operation which led to this week's seizures of computers belonging to men suspected of using their credit cards to buy paedophile pornography began in the summer of 1998 when the US Postal Service was asked to investigate a complaint by a senior Sri Lankan government official that his credit card had been used to buy pornography over the Internet.
The card had been stolen and used to purchase $1,000 worth of material which showed up on the official's card as "very, very adult fare". He asked the US authorities to investigate after he discovered that the company which had received the payment was based in Forth Worth, Texas.
The FBI had previously investigated the company after complaints that it was selling paedophile images. But the investigation had led nowhere as it was decided that it was providing mainly "adult" pornography - which is not illegal in the US.
However, the US Postal Service quickly discovered that the company was indeed selling paedophile images.
The company, Landslide Inc, was run by Thomas Reedy (37) and his wife Janice (33) from their home in Forth Worth. The Postal Service and FBI set up an operation to monitor its activities and detect its customers.
The investigation was named Operation Avalanche, a play on the name of the company, and cost the US authorities tens of millions of dollars. It was ultimately the most successful investigation of its type, has led to the arrests of hundreds of suspected paedophiles and to the investigation of thousands of men who used paedophile pornography.
The Postal Service and FBI established that Landslide Inc had, at one stage, a turnover of $1.4 million a month. The investigators had stumbled on what is believed to have been one of the largest paedophile pornography operations in existence.
Many Landslide customers spent thousands of dollars buying "new" images of child rape and molestation. One of its Irish customers, a wealthy executive in the telecommunications industry, is understood to have spent almost €20,000 on its images.
The material being supplied contained images of children aged from three to 14 being raped and sexually abused.
Hundreds of thousands of paedophile images are traded among paedophile Internet users free of charge. Landslide made its money through providing images of children being raped and molested.
The investigators found that Reedy was obtaining images from three main suppliers, two in Indonesia and one in Russia. The FBI subsequently issued warrants for the arrests of three men they named as Boris Greenberg of Russia and R.W. Kusuma and Hanny Inggnata of Indonesia.
Russia and Indonesia are among several countries where paedophile pornographic images are produced. The images of rape and molestation of children tend to be created in poor or Third World countries and sold to mainly middle-class men in Western countries. Most of the homes raided here last Monday were in prosperous suburbs and the suspects almost exclusively middle-class professionals. The Reedys trial heard testimony from a British police officer that among the images traded by Landslide were hundreds from the "Helen Series".
These were pictures taken by a man in Stockport, Lancshire, of him abusing his stepdaughter. He photographed himself raping the child from about the age of seven to 12.
New pictures from the series are still emerging, even though the rapist has been in prison for over two years, according to Prof Max Taylor of the Department of Applied Psychology in UCC. Prof Taylor's team has been monitoring paedophiles on the Internet for several years and has provided evidence used by British police to capture a number of paedophiles.
LAST Monday's raids follow operations in other Western nations where police forces have been supplied with credit card transaction details by the US authorities through Interpol.
If the suspects raided on Monday had been paying attention to the US media they might have learned that they were likely to be caught. On August 8th last year, the day Thomas Reedy was sentenced to life imprisonment and his wife to 14 years, the US Attorney General, John D. Ashcroft and Chief Postal Inspector, Kenneth C. Weaver, announced the existence of Operation Avalanche.
They also revealed the Postal Service and FBI, working through Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces, had been working with 140 law enforcement agencies across the US and had arrested more than 100 Landslide customers.
A key element in the investigation was the decision of the Dallas Police Department to devote very large resources to its Cyber software and program development section to assist in Operation Avalanche.
After the arrest and conviction of the Reedys, the US Attorney General announced that he was greatly expanding the resources available to tracking down paedophiles on the Internet.
The information passed to the Garda was used to make discreet inquiries about the activities of the suspected men. Initial investigations raised concern about a small number who were suspected of being abusers rather than just users of pornography.
A number were arrested before this week's raids and are facing or are expected to face serious charges.