Pedophiles on the Darknet: BKA succeeds in striking against platforms

German investigators have struck a blow against pedo-criminal online platforms. The alleged main administrator was arrested in Saxony. However, a copy of a forum is already online again, and another main suspect has apparently escaped.

On the Internet he called himself “Elias Harper”, after a character from the American television series quantico, about FBI recruits. On November 29, the man finally received a surprise visit from real police officers: special forces stormed an apartment in Saxony, not far from the border with the Czech Republic, and arrested the 21-year-old German. He is said to be the main administrator of “BoyVids 6.0” and “Forbidden Love”, two of the world’s largest online exchange forums for images of sexual violence against children.

The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) is investigating the alleged backers of several platforms on behalf of the Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT) of the Frankfurt am Main Public Prosecutor’s Office. The forums contained thousands of links to photos and videos documenting the most serious sexual abuse of children, almost all of which were available free of charge.

Alleged administrator found

The platforms themselves were only accessible via the dark web, a particularly protected part of the internet, while the photos and videos linked there were mostly hidden on servers in the normal network.

After research by NDR and WDR In the past few weeks, German investigators have succeeded in identifying “Elias Harper” as the alleged administrator of the Darknet platforms. The prosecutors also had access to the servers by November 30 at the latest. Since that day, users have not been able to log in there.

Arrests in several states

In addition to the suspected main administrator from Saxony, a 44-year-old man from Lower Saxony was also arrested in November, as well as another 45-year-old suspect from Schleswig-Holstein last Tuesday. There is an urgent suspicion of the gang distribution of so-called child pornography against the men.

In addition, a suspected administrator of “Forbidden Love” was arrested in Brazil at the end of November. Another prime suspect, namely the original founder of Forbidden Love, has been identified according to research by the ARD political magazine Panorama and the research format STRG_F (NDR/RADIO) apparently unidentified and remains active on other forums. On request, the ZIT said that no information could be given for tactical reasons.

More than a million registrations

Around 410,000 users had registered on the “BoyVids 6.0” platform, which had been in existence since the beginning of December 2022, within a year. They exchanged footage showing sexualized violence against males between the ages of zero and 17. “Forbidden Love” was about depictions of sexualized violence against girls and young women. This platform has been around since February 2022 and has had around 846,000 registrations to date.

Since many users have multiple accounts at the same time to protect themselves, the figures do not allow reliable information about the total number of users. Analyzes by Panorama and “STRG_F” suggest that probably tens of thousands of people moved to “Boy Vids 6.0” and “Forbidden Love”.

The investigations are also focusing on the “Child Porn Market” website, which the 21-year-old alias “Elias Harper” apparently only activated in October and on which videos of child abuse are to be offered for sale.

Perpetrators secured a copy of the forum

According to the BKA and the ZIT, by shutting down the forums, it was possible to withdraw the illegal recordings “by shutting down further distribution”. In fact, however, “Elias Harper” had already made a complete copy of the forum available to the leadership circles of the “BoyVids 6.0” platform. There are around a dozen users, most of whom are now active in other forums.

The research of panorama and CTRL_F show that this copy with around 78,000 pages was already published on December 7th and that the leadership circle is currently working on a follow-up page for “BoyVids 6.0”. This should go online in the coming days and should make the content that was actually switched off available again.

Apparently again no systematic deletion

As in previous cases, the investigators apparently did not systematically delete illegal abuse material in “BoyVids 6.0” and “Forbidden Love”, although this is possible. The perpetrators mostly use storage services on the ordinary web to hide their photos and videos. On the dark web, they then only share a download link.

A joint research project by NDR and the magazine “Der Spiegel” showed in December 2021 that large amounts of photos and videos can be systematically removed from the Internet. Although “Elias Harper” used a concealment of the links for his forums, systematic deletion would have been possible. When asked, the ZIT said that the process of securing evidence was still ongoing and that the data should be deleted afterwards.