Two British men in their 50s were sentenced to prison for setting up and running a chat room on the dark web where users shared indecent images of children.
David Buckley, 54, of Goole, East Yorkshire, the United Kingdom and Brett McBain, 51, of Balham, south London, the United Kingdom, were sentenced to prison for setting up a chat room named TheOtherPlace on the dark web to distribute hundreds of thousands of “the most disgusting” child porn images. Both of the criminals admitted they had set up the now defunct chat room in 2014, which they described as “a channel for the respectful appreciation of youthful beauty.”
At the time, the chat room had 60 active users who shared links to as many as 2,500 child porn images in a 24-hour period of time. After law enforcement authorities analyzed the content the users shared with each other, investigators noted some of the images were categorized to the most severe category A.
According to the documents at the Old Bailey, in the course of two years, McBain shared 200,000 indecent images of children with the users of TheOtherPlace, while Buckley sent in 30,000 links to the chat room. While McBain pleaded guilty to 10 charges relating to the distribution of child pornographic content on the internet (dark web), Buckley, who posed as a woman online, only admitted a single charge of conspiring to distribute indecent images.
Measuring the significance of the crimes committed and the charges, Recorder Brian Altman QC sentenced McBain to five years in prison while Buckley has to spend three years behind the bars.
“This is an extremely grave case of its kind. Particularly in the case of McBain, the very high numbers and nature of the images involved are quite simply staggering,” the judge told the duo. Altman told the defendants that the child porn chat room was set up with the intention to distribute “the most disgusting images of children one could ever imagine”.
According to the court documents, Buckley and McBain met in a similar darknet channel. After they spoke online for awhile, they decided to set up a rival website on the dark web where they can share indecent images of children. Records at the Old Bailey state the duo never met each other in person. Buckley even pretended to be a woman going by the pseudo name “Ladybird” since he got more attention from the community that way.
The case started when the Western Australian Police alerted the National Crime Agency about a user called “MrBrett” who they identified and was constantly present in the dark web chat room. Law enforcement traced back the MrBrett username to McBain who was arrested in May 2016 at his home in Balham while he was logged into TheOtherPlace.
At the time of his arrest, McBain told the officers he was “officially screwed” because of the seized items found in his home. Law enforcement authorities discovered more than 160,000 child abuse images, as well as an electronic diary that detailed his fantasies of sexually abusing minors.
Deepdotweb.com is author of this content, TheBitcoinNews.com is is not responsible for the content of external sites.
Our Social Networks: Facebook Instagram Pinterest Reddit Telegram Twitter Youtube
