Police have arrested 26 people in an international child pornography ring that federal authorities call the largest of its kind.
The investigation was headquarterd out of the U.S. Attorneys Office for Southern District of Indiana and reached across the United States and around the world. For nearly three years, federal agents tracked up to a thousand child pornography consumers as they traded images across the internet.
"What's unprecedented about this case is the sheer volume of what they were trading, the number of people and the very high level of organization," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve DeBrota.
Some of the top-level pornographers had more than a million images in their files, said DeBrota, all organized to gender, age and sex act.
"They would gather together, discuss child pornography and assist everyone in the trafficking of the material and discussing it," said DeBrota.
While 16 victims have been identified, DeBrota said none of the children depicted were from Indiana and the videos and photographs were not produced in this state. Most of the images originated in Europe.
Up to one thousand people around the world had access to the images.
