Darknet sting nets 3 Texans in world’s largest child porn market

Federal authorities said they have shut down the world’s largest darknet child porn marketplace and charged more than 300 people who accessed it, including the site’s operator and two former federal agents assigned to the San Antonio area.

Jong Woo Son, 23, a South Korean national, was indicted by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia for his operation of Welcome To Video, what officials said is “the largest child sexual exploitation market by volume of content.” He had been in custody in South Korea since last year.

His case culminates years of investigations by several agencies, who announced Wednesday the arrests in 25 U.S. states and in the United Kingdom, South Korea, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Czech Republic, Canada, Ireland, Spain, Brazil and Australia, according to a news release from the Justice Department and the agencies.

Some had already been arrested during the lengthy investigation, including exHomeland Security agent Richard Nikolai Gratkowski, 40, and former Border Patrol agent Paul Casey Whipple, 35, both of whom were assigned to the San Antonio area. Also among those charged was Pflugerville resident Michael Ezeagbor, 22.

The site operated from June 2015 until it was seized and shut down by U.S. authorities in March 2018.

“Darknet sites that profit from the sexual exploitation of children are among the most vile and reprehensible forms of criminal behavior,” said Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “This administration will not allow child predators to use lawless online spaces as a shield.”

According to court records, on March 5, 2018, agents in the IRS’ Criminal Investigation division, Homeland Security Investigations, the National Crime Agency in the United Kingdom, and Korean National Police in South Korea arrested Son and seized the server that he used to operate the darknet market that exclusively advertised child sexual exploitation videos available for download by members of the site.

The operation resulted in the

seizure of approximately eight terabytes of child sexual exploitation videos, which is one of the largest seizures of its kind.

Welcome To Video offered the videos for sale using the cryptocurrency bitcoin, officials added.

The site boasted more than 1 million downloads of child exploitation videos by users, who received a unique bitcoin address after

creating an account.

Gratkowski, for instance, used his USAA bank account — and his government ID — to buy bitcoin and open an account on the Welcome To Video website in April 2016.

Gratkowski pleaded guilty last November to re

ceiving child porn and was sentenced in May of this year to 70 months in federal prison without parole.

Whipple, of Hondo, is charged with producing and distributing child porn. He is awaiting trial on Nov. 4 in San Antonio.

Ezeagbor pleaded guilty on May 30 to one count of possession of child pornography and is scheduled for sentencing in December in Austin.

gcontreras@expressnews.net