They found the secret passages of what appeared to be legitimate websites, opening the secret door into the paedophiles' hellish trading room.
Local crimesĪs task force Argos and their international partners mapped the network, they were able to crack the ring's encryption codes. German police tracked down the location and rescued the children. Watching the video, police recognised the theme of a local radio station playing in the background and they heard the unusual names of the two girls. He filmed and broadcast his crimes live via his webcam. One is six years old, the other one is just three years old. The man, who appeared in court two weeks ago, has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for the rape of his two daughters. Then, Operation Achilles found another predator, this time in Germany. In Queensland, nine men were arrested and charged for buying the video, and a four-year-old Australian girl was found and rescued. "We have found pictures of the models, in which the model is holding a piece of paper with the name of the customer - a personal trophy." "Individuals were willing to pay hundreds and hundreds of euros if, for example, their favourite model would do their particular pose," he said. When Daphne and Irene's father was finally arrested in Belgium, he had 150 separate videos of his children.Įuropol officer Menno Hagemeijer says many of the videos were tailor-made. He was found to have 150,000 euros in cash stashed in his stereo speakers. On July 27, the father was arrested and the house of the Italian webmaster, Sergio Marzola, was raided in Italy. It turned out to be what is now being dubbed, 'the Daphne and Irene' video, which shows the repeated rape of two girls aged 11 and nine, by their 35-year-old father. A video was being offered for sale to the network. Rescuing childrenĪt this point, task force Argos made a shocking discovery. In January 2006, task force Argos began one of the most complex child paedophile investigations ever undertaken, in co-operation with the FBI, Interpol, Europol, German, British, New Zealand and Canadian police.īy July 10, 2006, covert operatives had broken through the security apparatus that protected the paedophile ring. The New Zealanders passed their information to task force Argos in Queensland. It was December 2005 when New Zealand's Department of Internal Affairs made an extraordinary discovery, which cannot be disclosed as the investigation is continuing.
Operation Achilles began with a series of secret events in New Zealand and Australia.
In the end, it was a group of Queensland police that brought the downfall of the network and cracked the case open for the FBI.
Many of the images were sadomasochistic.īut what the men didn't know was that their group was about to be destroyed from within, because the world's police had finally caught up with their computer techniques. This paedophile network had more than 400,000 child abuse films and images on their computers. I'm honoured just to be part of it," he said. "My thanks to you and all the others that together make this the greatest group of pedos to ever gather in one place. Three girls, the first one being the youngest, around eight or nine years old," another said.Īnother writes his assessment of the importance of the child sex network. "I have a few five-year-old Taras that you do not have," one said. Legal documents obtained by ABC1's Lateline program show just how at ease the men were as they messaged each other offering pictures. "We have found ourselves now, as this case demonstrates, that we have groups as sophisticated as any other criminal organisation, that have the wherewithal, that have the means to literally pursue children and to exploit children at a level that has surprised us," he said. Seasoned paedophiles, they believed their sophisticated knowledge of computer encryption had made them untouchable, and in that safe zone, they commissioned, made and traded images of the youngest children involved in the worst sex acts.įBI executive assistant director J Stephen Tidwell says the pornography ring used highly specialised techniques to hide from law enforcement authorities. 'Operation Achilles' was initiated by Queensland police task force Argos and it is alleged that a core administrator of the highly secret website was a 29-year-old Queensland public servant.įor years, a network of men scattered across the world had reached what they considered to be the pinnacle of success. Police agencies around the world are now sifting through 400,000 pieces of evidence after they cracked a major online child pornography network that used a sophisticated encryption code.