The Public Prosecution Service demanded on Tuesday eight years in prison and TBS against a 45-year-old man who founded a website with images of child abuse and made a lot of money with it. The police were able to identify eighteen minor Dutch victims.
The man from the Brabant municipality of Halderberge is said to have founded the website in September 2011. Users could share criminal webcam images of minor boys on the site. According to the Public Prosecution Service (OM), these are boys between the ages of eight and eighteen.
The boys were misled by the suspect on a chat platform. The suspect pretended to be a nineteen-year-old woman and misled them. They did not know that the man was making recordings and then distributing them.
According to the public prosecutor, the suspect had a leading role in both managing the website and providing the criminal material. “The very nasty thing about this digital abuse is that images that are on the internet often do not disappear from there. Countless children have to live with the knowledge that their photos or videos can and will be viewed time and again.”
An “enormous amount” of victims has been found. Because of that quantity, the police focused on identifying the Dutch victims. The Public Prosecution Service said that there were many more (international) victims, but that the police “had to make choices”.
Man also Suspended of Leading A Criminal Organization
Users of the site could take out a subscription and gain access to a protected part of the website for a fee with cryptocurrency. During the investigation, the police intercepted login names and IP addresses of users. These are both Dutch and foreign users.
The Public Prosecution Service has seized so-called crypto wallets worth 1.4 million euros. The Public Prosecution Service is also demanding confiscation, which means that the man must hand in (part of) the profit.
The man is not only suspected of possessing, making and distributing images of child abuse, but also of committing indecent assault with minors via a video connection. In addition, the Public Prosecution Service sees the suspect as the leader of a criminal organization that distributed child abuse images for years.
The court will pronounce judgment on June 10.